America's future in Iraq, an annotated reading list

07 July 2008

For nearly as long as the United States has been engaged in Iraq, Washington has worked to put its stamp on post-Saddam stability. Six months after the Baath party's exit in 2003, Pentagon planners were lobbying for "virtually unfettered freedom" for US forces, according to papers obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Baghdad, meanwhile, has typically left military matters to the Americans and focused instead on budgets, ballots and political reconciliation. But as debate over a long-term security agreement heats up between the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the administration of President George W. Bush, a unified voice of opposition is rising from the war's ashes.

Politically divided for years, Iraqis are increasingly united in opposing the American presence. A UN Security Council mandate authorizing foreign forces in Iraq expires at the end of the year, and Washington needs a replacement to extend its legal authority to remain. But opposition is growing as Sunni and Shiite lawmakers and some militia leaders unite against what Iraqis consider an infringement on their sovereignty. As The New York Times has noted, the American approach may achieve that which recently seemed impossible, namely "unity among Iraq's disparate ethnic and political groups." Issues separating the sides include what role the US should play in defending Iraq, its efforts to confront terrorist groups and legal protections for US troops and contractors.

And yet it would be a stretch to call this a unified Iraqi political front; motivations for challenging the deals are as varied as the factions are diverse. Some analysts view Shiite parties as capitalizing on a growing nationalist backlash. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who says the deal would be "humiliating for the Iraqi people," has led a split from Maliki's Daawa party to form his own coalition.

Ali al-Adib, another Daawa party leader, contends the proposed agreements with the US would "impair Iraqi sovereignty" if American demands for basing requirements are met. Maliki himself has said talks are at a standstill. In the end, growing domestic pressure could force the prime minister to seek an extension of the UN mandate that authorizes the US military presence. A defense policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Stephen Biddle, says that this is one of a number of scenarios that could maintain American troops in Iraq for the medium-term. But such a compromise won't come without a fight: Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has called for his followers to boycott the negotiations, a move that some speculate is aimed at bolstering his standing ahead of provincial elections in fall.

Sunni calculations are more opaque. Kenneth Katzman, a specialist in Middle East affairs at the Congressional Research Service, says some Sunni factions favor a long-term security arrangement with Washington - in part because of assistance Sunni provinces received in fighting Al-Qaeda in Iraq. But Sunni members of the Iraqi Parliament have fanned out across Washington to express frustration with the negotiations.

For example, during congressional testimony on June 4, Sunni political leader Khalaf al-Oleiyan, who heads the National Dialogue Council, called for "a timetable for the withdrawal, which allows time to rebuild the Iraqi forces." The Sunni leader and his Shiite colleague, Nadim al-Jabiri, presented US lawmakers with a letter signed by a cross-section of Iraq's parliamentarians all making the same claim. Adnan Pachachi, a senior Sunni member of Parliament, meanwhile, disagreed with his colleagues' timetable demands during a trip to New York last week.

The agreements are also widely unpopular on the Iraqi street. Tufts University Middle East scholar Vali Nasr, who recently traveled to Iraq, says that the opposition is rooted in Iraqis' reading of colonial history. The agreements look "too much like Iraq of 1930s when the British, they claim, gave Iraq sovereignty and then took it away in a series of treaties." Patrick Seale, a British journalist and Middle East specialist, is more pointed. Writing in Al-Hayat, Seale argues the deals amount to "nothing less than a neocolonial strait-jacket." Public opinion polls have long suggested the Iraqi public opposes an open-ended American presence.

It remains far from certain whether Iraq's politicians will support or reject the security conditions sought by the United States. Ali Allawi, Iraq's former finance minister, writes in the British daily The Independent that the only remaining institution with the power to block the agreement - the Najaf religious establishment - thus far has not come out clearly against the deal. Iraqi political analysts say Shiite opposition may be little more than pandering in advance of the fall elections. But Max Boot, a senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, says while the elections are likely to compound the logjam, recent Iraqi military successes may have convinced Maliki "he doesn't need the Americans after all."

For the United States, such a conclusion could dramatically alter future military operations in the country and the region. "I think [the US] did not realize just how controversial this was going to be," says Yale Law School professor Oona Hathaway. "The last thing anyone should want is the troops being involved in an illegal war."

Greg Bruno is a staff writer for CFR.org, the website of the Council on Foreign Relations. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.

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