IRAQ A REAL HEADACHE FOR OBAMA

The war in Iraq now belongs to Barack Obama and it is steadily becoming a major political and military headache that will challenge the exit plans he outlined on the campaign trail.
It is said that politicians make so many promises when they are campaigning for office that the public rarely remembers many of them. That will surely not be the case over the war in Iraq where a recent upsurge in major terror attacks has raised the stakes for the U.S. military and for an Obama administration that has promised a complete withdrawal by 2011.
After he became president, Obama promised that two combat brigades totaling 12,000 troops would be withdrawn in six months as part of a strategy to end major combat operations by August 2010. Recently, while addressing troops at Camp Lejeune in N. Carolina, he declared he would have all U.S. troops out of Iraq by then end of 2011. By announcing that the Iraq occupation would be over in less than two years he pleased much of his base but his announcement did not sit well with some U.S. military leaders who fear that exact deadlines are not helpful because they set goals that may be impossible to meet if events on the ground dictate a renewed U.S. commitment. Obama has, of course, allowed himself considerable political leeway should he have to reverse course in the coming months. His front men have been pointing out that “conditions on the ground” could lead to an altering of the withdrawal deadline. That deadline was first set out in the Status of Forces Agreement signed by President Bush and the Iraqi government prior to him leaving office. But the Bush White House always expected the agreement would not be followed to the letter of the law because they had left enough scope within its complex framework to allow for a sizeable number of U.S. troops to remain in Iraq for another decade or more.
It now seems that the Obama White House and the Pentagon are at odds over that aspect of Iraq policy, with the latter using senior military figures to state that the SOFA agreement will likely be renegotiated. It is a public relations tactic that has drawn some swift rebukes in private from the White House yet it points to an underlying divergence of opinion about the handling of Iraq. At the core of the dispute is the Pentagon position that Article 27 of the agreement permits the U.S. to take military action “or any other measures” inside Iraq’s borders after 2011 to defend against external or internal threats. Maintaining that option would require keeping at least 50,000 troops in the country. It is worth noting that the U.S. has the world’s largest embassy in Baghdad, which was built with the aim of managing a sizeable U.S. presence for decades to come. The Pentagon would like Obama to renegotiate the agreement to ensure that flexibility beyond 2011 will not jeopardized by a future Iraq administration that takes its orders from Iran.
From Obama’s perspective, his promises of deadlines may prove wishful thinking if the recent mass killings by Sunni and Al Qaeda terrorists result in a renewed sectarian conflict on a scale that existed before the troop surge led by General David Petraeus in 2007. The surge proved successful in western Iraq in particular but some aspects of the strategy raised issues that may now have roots in the recent violent upsurge and the growing friction between Sunni militias and the Iraqi Shiite government of Nouri Al-Maliki.
A significant part of the surge was the role of what became known as the Awakening Councils – Sunni militias willing to fight on the U.S. side against Al Qaeda and other Sunni insurgents. In what would eventually become a $500 million project – cost of weapons and training not included – the Pentagon chose to describe the militias in internal memos as “Concerned and Local Citizens Groups,” even though they hardly matched that description. Many were former Baathists and soldiers in Saddam Hussein’s army, while a large number were insurgents who had fought against the U.S. presence from the start of the occupation. But, by joining the U.S. “war on terror,” the leaders of the Councils saw a distinct political advantage being allied with Washington. They were also happy that the Pentagon wanted to pay monthly salaries to their fighters. Before long, the Councils had 100,000 armed men at their disposal and they were critical in helping the U.S. put down the insurgency and destroy the power of Al Qaeda in Anbar province and across western Iraq. Many Awakening members were targeted for assassination by Al Qaeda and a large number lost their lives.
The Iraq prime minister, Nouri Al-Maliki never liked that part of the U.S. surge policy, arguing that it armed Baathists. He also warned that it was dangerous for the U.S. to train thousands of Sunni militiamen, who might later use their skills to destabilize the country in the event of a civil war. Nevertheless, the U.S. military command benefited so much from the militias it later put pressure on al-Maliki and his government to begin a process of integrating them into the military as a way of keeping them employed and making them part of the solution. Last November, the U.S. stopped paying the militias and turned over their handling to the Iraqi government. So far, the transition has been less than smooth even though there was agreement that 54,000 members of the Baghdad Awakening would be swiftly incorporated into the Iraqi army and given salaries. However, the massive drop in the price of oil, and the loss of oil revenues, has driven the Iraqi government close to bankruptcy. It has therefore been unable to pay salaries to many Awakening members.
Sunni fighters, who are closely watching U.S. troops leave Iraq, believe they will not get a good deal from a Shiite government that has a deep mistrust of them. They fear the moment the Obama exit plan gathers steam the Iraqi security forces will launch an all out effort to destroy the Awakening Councils and disarm their members. With that kind of mindset dominating debate within Sunni militias, there is a real risk those fighters will rejoin the insurgency in an effort to generate enough violence to keep the U.S. in Iraq beyond its exit deadline. That would give Sunnis time to work out a deal for their fighters to be incorporated into the Iraqi army, or time to build a large insurgent force capable of confronting the Iraqi army in the event of an all out sectarian civil war. Whatever happens, the prospect of more violence is real and it could derail White House plans for an exit by 2011. That would alter Barack Obama’s relationship with his base and with the Left in Congress. It could have an even broader impact on his wider political agenda.
If one is looking for signs of what the future may hold for U.S. policy in Iraq, the upsurge in violence in the past month is a worrying harbinger of things to come. But what happens after June when U.S. soldiers begin leaving Baghdad and other Iraqi cities will provide a clearer picture of the future. If it turns out to be a hot summer in Iraq, the Obama administration may be forced to reverse course at a time when it needs the troops in Iraq to win the war in Afghanistan.