Category: Iraq-2008-q4

The struggle for Baghdad’s soul?

The WaPo’s Mary Beth Sheridan has a piece in today’s paper describing the US-Iraqi negotiations over a SOFA as having an important backstory of a US-Iranian struggle for influence over the Iraqi government’s decisionmaking. She writes:

    A deal to authorize the presence of American forces in Iraq beyond 2008 is forcing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to choose between two influential powers in this country: the United States and Iran.
    U.S. officials had hoped Iraq would quickly approve the accord put before the cabinet this month, which would give 150,000 American troops legal authority to remain in Iraq after Dec. 31. But Iraqi political leaders have balked. Maliki has not openly supported the agreement forged by his negotiating team.
    As the U.S. ponders withdrawal, it is clear that American political capital in Iraq is waning as Iran’s grows…

She then describes Ghassan al-Attiyah, an Iraqi political analyst at London’s Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy in London as describing the Maliki government as being torn equally between both foreign powers.
For my part, I wrote back in early June that I thought Washington had lost the battle for influence over Baghdad’s decisionmaking, and I see no reason to change that judgment now.
Let’s review a couple of facts:

    1. The US has been extremely eager to “persuade” the Baghdad government to conclude a long-term security agreement it. Baghdad has thus far resisted these entreaties– though it has signed a security agreement with Iran.
    2. The US has also been extremely eager to “persuade” the Baghdad parliament to pass oil legislation that would thereafter allow western oil firms to conclude legally sound contracts with the Baghdad government. The Iraqi government and parliament have been playing a prolonged game of “pass the parcel” regarding that oil legislation, so western oil firms have not yet been able to sign contracts with the Baghdad government. Meantime, back in June, Baghdad concluded a significant ($3 billion) oilfield development/rehab contract with China.

Why do the MSM in the US not report these things, and not take them into adequate account when they’re assessing the present state of play inside Iraq? Why do they connive so deeply in perpetuating the myth maintained by the Bush administration that, (a) the recent history of the US intervention in Iraq has been one of some strategic success; (b) if we can’t yet exactly see the success, still, it is just around the corner; and (c) that Washington is still, definitely, in a position to be able to impose its “conditions” on Baghdad?
However, what is happening in and over Iraq right now is not a purely bilateral, zero-sum game between the influence of Washington and that of Tehran. This, because there are significant actors within Tehran that see the continued deployment of some US troops in Iraq as helpful to their own security (by providing a self-deterrent against any US or US-enabled attack against Iran.)
I think this is the best context in which to understand the otherwise bizarre “threat” that Gen. Ray Odierno delivered to the Baghdad government last week, namely that if the Baghdad government didn’t hurry up and sign the SOFA on the terms Washington wants, why then the US forces might all just have to pack up and go home.
From the point of view of Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki and a strong majority of both the Iraqi population and the Iraqi parliament, that outcome would be just fine. In poll after poll after poll, a strong majority of Arab Iraqis (though not of members of the Kurdish community that makes up around 17% of the national population) say that that is just what they want to happen.
So as a political “threat” against Maliki it doesn’t make any sense. And one has to assume that even Ray Odierno is smart enough to understand that at this point?
But Odierno was presumably calculating that the US message (blackmail threat?) to Maliki would also be heard in Tehran… And there, by contrast, it might indeed have some political traction and relevance?
If this is the case, as I suspect, then we could conclude that Tehran might currently be exerting quiet pressure on the Maliki government to make some of the concessions in the SOFA negotiations that Odierno and his masters seek?
Interesting, if so.

Iraqi, Iranian dimensions of the Sukkariyeh raid

Well, as was quite predictable Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh has now trotted out new lines condemning Sunday’s raid in which US ground forces took off from (presumably) Iraqi territory on their heliborne extra-judicial execution mission in Sukkariyeh, in neighboring Syria.
The BBC tells us (link above) that after an Iraqi cabinet meeting today,

    government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh explicitly criticised the US over the reported helicopter strike.
    “The Iraqi government rejects the US helicopter strike on Syrian territory, considering that Iraq’s constitution does not allow its land to be a base for launching attacks on neighbouring countries,” he said.
    “We call upon American forces not to repeat such activities and Baghdad has launched an investigation into the strike.”

Yesterday, after Dabbagh was quoted as expressing some support for the extra-judicial execution raid, I noted that, “it is sometimes a little unclear who Dabbagh works for. In the past he has sometimes seemed to be a loyal mouth-piece for his Iraqi political bosses, and sometimes to be a bit of a cat’s-paw for the Americans.” Today, his Iraqi government masters have evidently jerked his chain.
Of more consequence than Dabbagh’s vacillations, however, is the fact that at that same cabinet meeting Iraq’s ministers were discussing the latest draft of the SOFA agreement sent along by the US: In the negotiation over this agreement the Iraqi side is still strongly insisting that any US forces on their territory should not be used to launch any operations against other countries that are not explicitly authorized by Baghdad.
The BBC report of the cabinet meeting said,

    Iraq’s cabinet authorised PM Nouri al-Maliki to put forward proposed changes to a security pact with the US.
    A government spokesman said the suggested amendments, agreed at a cabinet meeting, addressed both the wording and the content of the Status of Forces Agreement.
    … The US and Iraqi governments had previously said the pact, which would authorise the presence of US troops in Iraq until 2011, was final and could not be amended – only accepted or rejected by the Iraqi parliament.

Actually, I’m not sure the Iraqi government had previously said that. And evidently, if they– or perhaps the ever-dodgy Dabbagh claiming to speak in their name– did so, then now they have changed their mind.
Take that, Washington.
Also of note: Syria is no longer the international pariah it was earlier on this decade. Foreign Minister Walid Moallem has been in London, which wouldn’t have happened earlier on in the decade. Also, Syria has international allies who are weightier and more inclined to protect its interests than they were back then. (Russia is just one of these.)
Meanwhile, the Sukkariyeh raid has also attracted some notice in Iran, where some analysts have wondered whether the new US doctrine of “alleged hot pursuit” from inside Iraq could be applied across their border with Iraq, as easily as across Syria’s. Asia Times’s Kaveh Afrasiabi, writing from Tehran today, quotes an unnamed “political scientist” there as saying,

    “The chances are that the US incursion into Syria is a dress rehearsal for action against Iran and the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards [Corps], just as they often portray Israel’s aerial attack on Syrian territory last year as a prelude for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.” … [He/she added] that since the US had already branded Iran’s Guards as terrorists, it had the necessary rationale to do so.

Afrasiabi also writes,

    In light of the incursion on Sunday by US forces inside Syrian territory, ostensibly to pursue al-Qaeda terrorists, there is suddenly concern on the part of many analysts in Tehran that the security agreement between Baghdad and Washington is not simply an internal matter for Iraqis to decide, but rather a regional issue that calls for direct input by Iraq’s neighbors.

I would say, strictly speaking, that there must have always been a degree of such concern; but maybe the recent raid increased it. Anyway, the Sukkariyeh raid is clearly very relevant to those clauses of the draft Iraqi-US SOFA that deal with who exercises effective authority over the use of any US troops that remain in Iraq: Washington or Baghdad?
Afrasiabi’s piece is interesting and apparently well reported.
He writes:

    “Iraq’s neighbors have been asked by the international community to participate in Iraq’s reconstruction and therefore by definition they should also be involved in security matters as well,” another analyst at a Tehran think-tank told the author.
    This is not altogether an unreasonable request. Iran and the US have participated in three rounds of dialogue on Iraq’s security, and that, according to Tehran analysts, is as good a reminder as any that Washington’s decision to ignore Iran’s viewpoints on the security agreement is a bad error.
    Simultaneously, there is a feeling that not all is lost and that the architects of this agreement have indeed taken into consideration some of Iran’s vocal objections, such as the initial agreement’s provisions for extraterritoriality whereby US personnel in Iraq would be immune from the Iraqi laws. That aspect has been modified, and the agreement also sets a time table for the withdrawal of US forces by no later than December 31, 2011, again something favored by Iran.

The bottom line I take from that is that there is a politically significant trend in Iran that is not wholly opposed to some US troops remaining in Iraq for a while longer— at least, so long as the actual mission and use of those troops is subject to some pretty severe constraints.
Iranian contentment with the continued deployment of some (or perhaps even a substantial number) of US troops inside Iraq– provided they are not a precursor force for a US attack on Iran– makes some strategic sense. All the US forces deployed throughout Iraq, at the end of very long and vulnerable international supply lines, act as, in effect, Iran’s first line of deterrence against any serious attack on its territory by either the US or Israel. They are sitting ducks for Iranian counter-attacks that, in the event of a US or US-enabled attack on Iran would be quite justified under international law.

Syria raid, additional notes

I see that Pat Lang is speculating that the raid might have been some kind of rogue operation on the part of the US Special Forces Command.
I certainly respect the Colonel’s lengthy experience on such matters, but I still find it hard to believe that that even the Special Ops boys would be foolhardy enough to go into a whole new, very sensitive national jurisdiction (country) without getting political clearance at the very highest level… and also without coordinating closely with, and getting the permission of, the commanders operating in that very same locality, in this case the commanders in Western Iraq and in Iraq, nationwide. The all-Iraq commander is now the bellicose Gen. Ray Odierno.
Lang writes of the Special Ops Forces that they,

    are exclusively focused on hunting down terrorist people and support group[s] world-wide. Rumsfeld made them largely independent of the regular military chain of command. They amount to a global SWAT team. They develop their own targeting intelligence and make their own plans. The amount of control that the local US joint commander has over them is not very clear. They are not noted for a great deal of insight into geopolitical niceties.
    – General Odierno, the man who replaced Petraeus in Iraq, is not famous for nuanced reactions to frustrating situations.

So his argument is that the American kill team was either acting independent of the Iraq command, or doing so with Odierno’s support. For my part I still don’t see them transgressing the Syrian border in this extremely blatant (and lethal) way without getting clearance from the very highest levels in Washington: the President himself.
After all the public (and doubtless also private) discussion over whether and how to mount similar kinds of operations inside Pakistan– where the presumed targets of such raids include Osama Bin Laden and his highest lieutenants, i.e. targets of the very highest ‘value’ to the US— no-one in the military, not even Ray Odierno or the commanders of the Special Ops Command, can be foolish enough to think that such an operation can or should ever be mounted without getting the highest imaginable clearance from Washington.
(After reading 2/3 of Gellman’s book on Cheney, I would say it would be Cheney calling the shots in this matter, and then delivering the ‘presidential’ decision, pre-made, to GWB on a plate.)
As it happens, the NYT reported today that,

    The White House has backed away from using American commandos for further ground raids into Pakistan after furious complaints from its government, relying instead on an intensifying campaign of airstrikes by the Central Intelligence Agency against militants in the Pakistani mountains.

In this AP report today, Pauline Jelinek made clear that back in July it was “President Bush” (read, President Cheney-Bush) who back in July made the decision allowing ground raids into Pakistan. The US Special Ops Command then launched only one documented ground raid there pursuant to that decision. That was on Sept 3. Pakistan’s newly elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, a strong US ally, immediately became apoplectic, and sent his national security adviser to Washington to protest in the strongest possible terms…
So my surmise is still certainly, as I noted earlier, that it must have taken a “presidential” decision in Washington to permit yesterday’s ground attack against Syria to take place.
—
And a note about the Government of Iraq’s role in the affair. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh has been quoted by Reuters as saying,

    the attack was launched against “terrorist groups operating from Syria against Iraq,” including one which had killed 13 police recruits in an Iraqi border village.
    “Iraq had asked Syria to hand over this group, which uses Syria as a base for its terrorist activities,” Dabbagh said.

This Reuters report (datelined from Damascus, but also using reporting from Baghdad and other capitals) notes that Dabbagh “did not say who had carried out the raid inside Syria.” He also did not say who had authorized the carrying out of the raid.
Did his bosses in the Iraqi political leadership get to sign off on it before it was executed?
I highly doubt that.
Actually, it is sometimes a little unclear who Dabbagh works for. In the past he has sometimes seemed to be a loyal mouth-piece for his Iraqi political bosses, and sometimes to be a bit of a cat’s-paw for the Americans.
If the Americans did conduct this raid without the clear, antecedent permission of the Iraqi government, then this is precisely the kind of rogue US military operation, using Iraqi territory to attack other countries, that the Iraqi government has been seeking to prohibit under the terms of the still-unsigned SOFA.
McClatchy Baghdad’s correspondent Sahar writes:

    Unilateral job? Joint American – Iraqi job? Does it really matter?
    Is Iraq going to become a launching pad for blatant American aggressions upon targets in neighbouring countries?
    The Status of Forces Agreement is still in a no-man’s-land; doesn’t the U.S. want the Iraqi people to support it?
    If they do, they’re certainly not going about it the right way.

—-
As regular readers here are probably aware, all the highest-level officials in the present Iraqi government– but not, perhaps, spokesman al-Dabbagh– have warm relations with Syria. (And also, by the way, with Iran.)
That same Reuters report linked to above tells us that,

    Syrian Interior Minister Bassam Abdel Majeed said last week that his country “refuses to be a launching pad for threats against Iraq.”

And Josh Landis this morning gave some recent assessments from Centcom commander Gen. Petraeus about the general (though not total) effectiveness of the measures Syria has been taking along the country’s long border with Iraq.
The Reuters report says this about Syria’s early diplomatic responses to yesterday’s attack:

    [Syrian ambassador in London Sami al-]Khiyami said Syrian authorities were still awaiting word on the raid from the United States before deciding how to respond and whether to complain to the U.N. Security Council.
    … Syria’s foreign ministry summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires in Damascus on Sunday to protest. Syria has also urged the Iraqi government to carry out an immediate inquiry into the attack.
    Russia condemned the assault. “It is obvious that such unilateral military actions have a sharply negative effect on the situation in the region, and widen the seat of dangerous armed tension,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
    The Arab League also denounced the raid and called for an investigation.

So Syria’s diplomatic response is churning into action. It is doubtless slowed to a great extent by the extremely stingy amount of investment the government has put into the basic infrastructure of diplomacy (phones, computers, broad cadre of diplomats all around the world, etc) for the last half century. But it is happening.
As I noted earlier, the Asads are cautious and patient in their response to international crises.
But that’s no guarantee at all that Cheney-Bush won’t continue to try to provoke them.
Calling Bob Gates! Bob, you definitely need to put a straitjacket on that dangerous man, Dick Cheney.

US-Iraq SOFA latest draft, in English

… It’s been translated from the Arabic and posted here on the AFSC website by their Iraqi consultant, the talented and hard-working Raed Jarrar.
I haven’t had time to read it closely yet. On AFSC’s website Raed says,

    This agreement could further entrench the U.S. military in Iraq… It cannot be negotiated behind closed doors. The public, Congress, and the Iraqi Parliament should be informed and weigh in before we set a direction for the future.

On his own blog, he comments:

    I think it’s really interesting that while the bush administration are putting the last touches on this long term agreement with their Iraqi allies, bush issued a new presidential signing statement last week specifically to allow the U.S. government to control Iraq’s oil resources! The statement was issued as a response to a congressional law that prohibits the U.S. government from taking control over Iraq’s oil and gas resources.
    What a great message to be given at this time: not only we’re planning to occupy your country military, but we also have the intention of steeling your oil and gas.
    for more details on the signing statement, check FCNL’s press-release here. Bush’s statement can be read here.

Also, check out the photos of tlast saturday’s anti-occupation rallies in Baghdad that Raed posted on the preceding post in his blog, here.
It seems clear, meanwhile, that this latest draft of the SOFA agreement is no more likely than previous drafts to prove acceptable to the Iraqi side (including crucially, the Iraqi parliament.)
Back in early June, I “called” the inability of the Bush administration to impose its will regarding a longterm security agreement on the Iraqi governing body that it itself created back in the post-invasion period!
No reason to amend that judgment yet.