US Mission In Iraq

By Musa Keilani 
This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 12/06/2011

Tareq Al Hashemi, vice-president of Iraq,left Jordan after a three-day stay during which he shared with some media people his ideas about the future of his country, as well as his interpretation of the general pulse of the man in the Baghdad street. Hashemi’s Islamic background gave an extra colour to his understanding of events.

Iraq is too unstable for the US military to withdraw from that country and the situation will remain the same even six months from now, the deadline set by President Barack Obama for the last American soldier to leave. This is the argument put forth by senior Obama administration officials to persuade the Iraqi government to formally request an extension of the US military presence in Iraq, as the newly designated defence secretary hopes for.

Clearly, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, for reasons of their own, want the US forces to stay on. Talabani, a Kurd who has been closely aligned with the US since the end of the 1991 war that ended Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait, knows that there will be a violent flare-up between Kurdish forces and Arabs in Kurdistan when the US forces depart from Iraq.

In any event, he would not, and could not, say no to the US when it says it would be for everyone’s good if its military stayed in the country for some decades more.

As far as Maliki is concerned, he knows that the stability of his government depends on continued American military backing (and diplomatic support as well). Ideally, he would like the US military to stay on until his term runs out; he has already announced that he would not be seeking another term as prime minister.

Insisting for months that he wants the US military to leave as scheduled, Maliki switched track now, saying he would take a decision only after consulting his coalition partners. It is known that at least one component of the Maliki coalition, the party led by Moqtada Sadr, who is closely aligned with the Iranian regime, would fight tooth and nail against the US military presence continuing beyond December 31, 2011.

It goes without saying that Sadr, who has even threatened to mobilise his Mehdi Army to fight the American forces if they stay on, could quit the coalition and bring down the Maliki government. So much for Maliki’s ambition to complete his term as prime minister.

Of course, there could be unexpected developments that could change the scenario altogether. We have to wait to see the ramifications as they unfold gradually, starting with the dismissal of Ahmed Chalabi, days ago, as a goodwill gesture to the White House. In the meantime, Peter Van Buren, who spent a year in Iraq as a State Department team leader dealing with reconstruction, says that Washington wants to follow the precedent of post-war Germany and Japan by leaving behind “a decent-sized contingent of soldiers occupying some of the massive bases the Pentagon built, hoping for permanent occupancy.

It is not known how the US intends to accomplish it, but Washington will do it, one way or another.

Van Buren has also brought out some interesting features of the State Department’s plans for the US embassy being built in Baghdad. Writing on his blog under the title “A frat house with guns in Baghdad”, Van Buren says that Washington needs the Iraqi bases to signal its political might in the region.

As per the original schedule, as of October 1, 2011, the State Department will take over full responsibility for the US presence in Iraq from the military. The operations will be run from the embassy, which will cost about $736 million (once completed it will be the largest US diplomatic mission abroad - “built on a tract of land about the size of the Vatican and visible from space”.) The embassy will have some 17,000 personnel at some 15 sites, with 5,500 of them being hired guns to maintain security. Of the remaining 11,500, there will be only 200 or so in traditional diplomatic jobs and the rest will be support staff.

Around the US embassy will be a typical American environment, with pizza and hamburger joints, and convenience shops and shopping malls. There will be schools for the children of the staff of the embassy and indeed US-style hospitals since, as Van Buren puts it, “Iraqi medical care is considered too substandard and Iraqi hospitals too dangerous for use by Americans”.

The embassy compound would have its own arrangements for purifying water, generate power and process its sewage, ensuring that it could outlast any siege. The cost of protecting the embassy will be about $973 million over five years. A company called SOC was already given a contract.

“SOC will undoubtedly follow the current security company’s lead and employ almost exclusively Ugandans and Peruvians transported to Iraq for that purpose,” said Van Buren.

“For the same reasons Mexicans cut American lawns and Hondurans clean American hotel rooms, embassy guards come from poverty-stricken countries and get paid accordingly - about $600 a month. Their US supervisors, on the other hand, will get about $20,000 every month”.

Another company called Triple Canopy will provide protection outside the embassy compound, reputedly for $1.5 billion over a five-year span.

According to the State Department “Report on Department of State planning for the transition to a civilian-led mission in Iraq performance evaluation”, US diplomats will have their own little Air America in Iraq, a fleet of 46 aircraft.

Van Buren raised a few key questions: “Does Iraq threaten US security? Does it control a resource we demand? (Yes, it’s got lots of oil underground, but it produces remarkably little of the stuff.)”

“Is Iraq enmeshed in some international coalition we need to butter up? Any evil dictators or WMDs around? Does Iraq hold trillions in US debt?” And, finally, “What accomplishment are we protecting?”

Many Arabs watching what has been going on in Iraq for some decades now can only share what the Iraqi vice president warned against and what Van Buren graphically elaborated on. All share the opinion that the United States, in its Iraqi experience, had accomplished “preciously little”.