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ANALYSIS - Officials expect U.S. to play role in Iraq for years
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Published: July 1, 2009
WASHINGTON
U.S. troops are out of Iraq's cities but not its future. Even a best-case scenario is likely to feature an American role there for years -- militarily as well as diplomatically.
That does not mean a permanent large U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Under a security deal struck with the Bush administration, American forces are to be out by the end of 2011. But it's no secret that Iraq's security forces are not fully ready to handle even a diminished insurgency on their own.
Some senior U.S. military officers say privately that they anticipate Iraqi setbacks in coming months, particularly if the insurgents regroup. But by partnering with American forces, the Iraqis stand a good chance of succeeding. That is why a number of U.S. troops will remain in the cities to assist and advise.
But most were gone yesterday as Iraqis marked National Sovereignty Day with military parades and marching bands in Baghdad. In a reminder that the violence was not over, a car bombing in a crowded food market in the northern city of Kirkuk killed at least 27 people.
It is not possible to know how long Iraq will need U.S. help. Much will depend on the pace of progress toward Iraqi political reconciliation. That is because the success of the Iraqi security forces depends as much, if not more, on their willingness to operate in a nonsectarian, evenhanded way as on their technical competence.
Diplomatically, the U.S. role will be less visible but still crucial. Even with declining levels of violence since 2007, progress toward political reconciliation among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds has been minimal.
Obama made clear yesterday that while he expects violence to persist, the final outcome is an Iraqi responsibility.
There are still about 131,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. They won't be fighting in urban areas anymore, unless the Iraqi government asks for their help. Instead they will focus on securing Iraq's borders, keeping insurgents on the run in rural areas and conducting training with Iraqi security forces.
Even in the most optimistic of circumstances in which Iraq muddles through its political and ethnic problems -- and keeps chipping away at the insurgency -- it will still need U.S. support. And the Obama administration has said that it wants to build a long-term relationship with a key Arab state in a volatile region.
But if today's relative peace in Iraq unravels within the coming year, Obama will face tough choices, including whether to push back his announced timeline for ending the U.S. combat role in Iraq by September 2010.
He could not reinsert U.S. combat forces in Iraqi cities without Iraqi government permission, under terms of the security deal negotiated by the Bush administration last year. And he could not change the 2011 deadline for removing all U.S. troops from Iraq without renegotiating that deal.
Nor might he want to, even with the prospect of Iraq spinning into a new cycle of sectarian warfare. Obama came into office promising to end U.S. involvement in the war, arguing that Iraq's remaining problems are primarily of a political nature and cannot be solved by continued U.S. military force.
And more recently, he said that his administration was refocusing on what he considers a bigger problem -- increasing instability in Afghanistan and a growing insurgency in neighboring Pakistan. In that context, U.S. troop reductions in Iraq are a one-way ticket; once out, they are unlikely to return.
Qubad Talabani, the son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the Washington representative of the semiautonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, believes that if security deteriorates in coming months and hot-button political issues are not settled, the 2011 deadline should be renegotiated.
"Regardless of whether things go well or things deteriorate, there is going to be a strong connection between the United States and Iraq," he said yesterday.
What would Obama do if Iraq reverted to major violence?
Stephen Biddle, an Iraq watcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a recent analysis that a full-scale civil war could mean a civilian death toll in the range of 600,000 to more than 2 million.
"Given its role in precipitating the war in Iraq, the United States would bear special responsibility for such a catastrophe," Biddle wrote.
He added that if the conflict spread beyond Iraq's borders, it would risk a disruption of world oil markets and might derail prospects for successful Israel-Palestinian peace talks.
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