May 4 (Bloomberg) -- The recent spate of bombings in Iraq means U.S. officials may have to keep troops there longer than they planned, and Iraqis may have to live with a higher level of violence than they wish.
American military officials say they are now reconsidering plans to withdraw troops from all cities in Iraq by the end of June in the wake of car and suicide bombings that killed 191 people in Baghdad between April 23 and April 29.
And analysts say it is likely that violence will continue to plague many parts of Iraq still beset by insurgency and al- Qaeda terrorism, even if the level doesn’t return to its peak at the height of sectarian violence three years ago.
“What we have now is that we are going back to where things were in 2004,” said Liam Anderson, a professor of political science at Wright State University in Ohio. “This is the way things are going to go, but it is difficult to see a full-scale resumption of the insurgency.”
Persistent violence creates a dilemma for President Barack Obama, who is counting on troop reductions in Iraq to permit him to beef up forces in Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO troops are fighting al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies. Obama risks overseeing two unresolved wars with inadequate resources devoted to either.
The president has charged the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki with resolving conflicts between Sunni and Shiite Muslims over Sunni integration into the army and police, and between Kurds and Arabs over oil-rich land in the north.
Pressure
“Those are all issues that have not been settled the way they need to be settled,” Obama said in an April 29 press conference. “We’ve provided sufficient time for them to get that work done, but we’ve got to keep the pressure up, not just on the military side but on the diplomatic and development sides as well.”
Data compiled by Washington’s Brookings Institution from U.S. Defense Department reports show that the level of violence remains well below that of two years ago even with the recent attacks.
For example, Iraqi civilian deaths fell to 230 in February from a high of 3,500 in February 2007, then rose slightly to 260 in March, according to Brookings.
“Although you’ve seen some spectacular bombings in Iraq that are a legitimate cause of concern, civilian deaths, incidents of bombings, et cetera, remain very low relative to what was going on last year,” Obama said in the news conference.
Under an agreement struck last year between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government, U.S. forces are to leave cities by June 30 and the entire country by the end of 2011. Obama has said that he will withdraw all but 50,000 U.S. soldiers by Aug. 2010.
Mosul Delay
The agreement allows for the withdrawal schedule to be altered by mutual consent. U.S. officers have pinpointed Mosul as one city where troops might have to remain longer because it is a bastion of a Sunni Muslim insurgency and al-Qaeda, the global terror network led by Osama bin Laden.
“The only city I would consider that might require an extended stay would be Mosul,” General Ray T. Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told the Dubai newspaper Khaleej Times in an interview published April 27.
Col. Gary Volesky, the senior commander in Mosul, said in an April 14 teleconference with Pentagon reporters that the city is “short” 5,000 police needed to occupy neighborhoods cleared of insurgents by combined American and Iraqi raids.
U.S. Troops Out
Some doubts have also been raised about the timing of a pullback from Baghdad, although Odierno told the newspaper that he “felt comfortable” for now with overall security in the capital even after the recent suicide bombings.
“If this continued over a longer period of time then we might have to take that into consideration,” he said.
So far Iraq has shown no public eagerness to delay withdrawals. “We believe that Iraqi security forces are more suited to this fight than foreign troops,” Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said in an April 30 interview.
He acknowledged that the security situation in Baghdad, Mosul and other places is being reviewed and that al-Qaeda hasn’t yet been “eradicated.”
Still, he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq. “There is a clear timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and we would like to stick to the letter and spirit of the agreement,” he said, while attending an investment conference in London.
Obama plans to reduce the force in Iraq, currently at 135,000, by 12,000 within six months, Odierno told reporters in Baghdad on March 9.
‘Major Showdown’
Obama will need to keep enough troops in Iraq to exert some control over the situation as power struggles intensify during the course of the U.S. drawdown, Anderson said.
“I don’t see it is disintegrating rapidly, but a slow trend downwards as things become more and more fragmented,” he said. “We are heading for a major showdown for control of the state if the U.S. withdraws.”
Relations between Sunni Muslims and the central government, still dominated by representatives of the country’s Shiite Muslim majority, remain explosive.
Many Sunnis who initially fought the U.S. after the 2003 invasion have allied themselves with American forces against al- Qaeda in the past two years. Those Sunnis viewed al-Qaeda as excessively brutal and the Americans as a counterbalance to Shiite domination, said Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at New York’s Council on Foreign Relations.
Sunni Signal
Al-Maliki’s government hasn’t kept its pledge to integrate Sunni forces grouped in militias known as the Sons of Iraq and the Awakening Councils into the army and police forces, Biddle said. As a result, he said, some Sunnis now simply look the other way as al-Qaeda launches new attacks.
“The Sunni community shut al-Qaeda down,” Biddle said. “Now they have decided to send a signal about what could happen if the government doesn’t respect its promises and if the U.S. forces leave and abandon the Sunnis.”
A conflict is also looming between Kurds, who make up 20 percent of Iraq’s population, and Sunni Arabs, another 20 percent, over control of oil-rich parts of the north. The Kurds possess their own militia and have expanded control beyond their far northeastern autonomous zone into areas near the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
A “heavy U.S. footprint” will be needed in at least Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk, which is the hub of northern oil production, said Michael Knights, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It will take lots of effort to prevent local flare-ups.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Williams in Cairo at dwilliams41@bloomberg.net; Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: May 3, 2009 17:48 EDT
Powered by ScribeFire.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment