The Iraqi SOFA/WA: Uncertainties– but also a text – Just World News with Helena Cobban

Yesterday, the Iraqi parliament gave preliminary ratification for the Status of Forces– or, more correctly, Withdrawal– Agreement with the US that had been negotiated by PM Maliki (and foreign minister Zebari) over the course of the past seven or so months.
The ratification was only preliminary because it was made conditional on a countrywide popular referendum to provide final approval for the Withdrawal Agreement on July 30, 2009. That is one month after the deadline specified in the text of the agreement for the withdrawal of all US (and other foreign forces) from Iraq’s towns and cities into bases/cantonments outside the urban areas. That provision provides an important mechanism by which the Iraqi political system can ‘benchmark’ the performance of the US side of its obligations under the agreement.
Oh, how the balance has shifted since the days, not so long ago, when numerous actors in the US political system asserted they had the possibility (and some kind of ‘right’) to ‘benchmark’ the behavior of the Iraqi government.
The fact that the Iraqi parliament approved the SOFA/WA, reportedly through winning the votes of 148 of the 198 lawmakers attending the session, is known. So too– finally!– is the exact content of the English-language version of the final text of the treaty, which was published by the White House here (PDF) yesterday, while most Americans were busy gorging themselves on turkey and not thinking about Iraq at all.
Much else about the agreement remains murky. This includes the question of whether all the Iraqi legislators who took part in the vote were all agreed regarding what it was they were voting on… and also, the precise attitude towards it of the ruling bodies in neighboring Iran.
On this latter point, the FT’s Najmeh Bozorgmehr has the best reporting I’ve seen to date.
She writes from Tehran,

Tehran has been relatively satisfied

Bozorgmehr quotes Sadegh Kharrazi, Iran’s former ambassador to Paris, as saying that “Iran has adopted active silence [regarding the SOFA/WA] which means it is generally okay with the moderated version even though it does not agree with all of it.”
See also this analysis by NIAC’s Babak Rahimi, which was quoted by Bozorgmehr.
Back on November 17, I noted, as Rahimi did in his piece several days later, that Iranian judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi had expressed his approval of the Iraqi cabinet’s November 16 adoption of the SOFA/WA.
I commented in that post:

having US forces tied down as sitting ducks in very-close-by Iraq through the end of 2011 is seen as a handy guarantor– at least for the next three years– that no-one in Washington will decide to attack Iran in this period.

I still think that analysis holds up.
I’ll note in passing that the coverage that Juan Cole had today of the question of Iran’s attitude toward the SOFA/WA seemed uncharacteristically ill-informed and muddled.
However, Juan– and the Iranian radio report that he characterizes, unjustifiably, as “celebratory in style”– are not the only parties who have seemed generally unclear as to what is actually in the SOFA/WA text.
The NYT’s Suadad al-Salhy blogged here on Monday that,

It seems like 70% of the Iraqi MP’s have no idea what is in the agreement. This is clear from the complaints and criticisms that I hear when I am listening to their questions in the press room of the parliament building, and on the television coverage when I get home.

She also gives some good examples of that…
Let’s hope the Iraqi parliamentarians became somewhat better informed before they voted yesterday?
So now, what can we say about the content of the SOFA/WA text?
As far as I know, the version web-published (PDF) by the White House yesterday was the first version released publicly of the official English text. And the White House also, for good measure, web-published (PDF) an official English-language version of the accompanying ‘Strategic Framework Agreement’, while they were about it.
I note that both these documents appear to be PDF’s of the official international agreements that were signed on November 17. Both carry the signatures of the signatories from each side. Both also state this:

each text being equally authentic.

This is interesting– particularly as regards Article 24, the crucial article regarding US withdrawal.
My understanding is that the Al-Sabah version of the Arabic text that Raed Jarrar directed us to on November 17 was the “definitive” Arabic version of the text.
It states, at Article 24, the following:

Raed had translated that as:

must

This, where the White House text says only, in both those paragraphs, that all the US troops “shall” withdraw. However, in the Arabic, the word “yujib” that introduces each of these paragraphs clearly carries the meaning “must.”
Interesting.
I note, too, that in the White House version, the title of the agreement (which they are eager not to call a treaty) is given as an agreement between the two countries “On the Withdrawal of the United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during their Temporary presence in Iraq.”
… More about the content of the now-released version of the Strategic Framework Agreement later. But at my first reading, I’d say that it doesn’t look nearly as weaselly, sinister, or threatening to Iraqi sovereignty as some people had previously feared.

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