WASHINGTON—The Iraq war was declared officially over on Dec. 15 by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at a flag-lowering ceremony in the fortified compound at a Baghdad airport. Nearly 150,000 U.S. troops have left Iraq since the pullout began in 2008. All the remaining U.S. military forces were out of the country by Sunday, Dec. 18, ahead of the Dec. 31 deadline.
The support and sacrifice the United States gave to Iraq was enormous by any method of calculation. Nearly 4,500 U.S. service members were killed and about 32,000 wounded in almost nine years of war.
The United States deposed Saddam Hussein’s regime and later fought back a Sunni insurgency supported by al-Qaeda terrorists. The Shi'ites attacked with militias, sectarian killings escalated, and Iraq was in a civil war until the U.S. troop surge brought some stability. Over 1 million personnel were deployed to Iraq. The monetary costs are staggering—exceeding $1 trillion.
Meghan L. O‘Sullivan, former deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, said Dec. 16 on a Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) teleconference that our presence in Iraq acted as “psychological ballast” against undemocratic and sectarian violence. O’Sullivan was a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, and is currently at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.
The United States turned over the reins of government in 2004 to a transitional Iraqi government that led to parliamentary elections in 2005 and a final constitution. After that moment, Washington could do little more than advise on how to create a democracy, respect religious differences, and advance human rights.
“You will leave with great pride—lasting pride, secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to begin a new chapter in history,” said Panetta. He said the mission had made Iraq sovereign and independent and “able to govern and secure itself.”
There will still be a U.S. presence in the country, but no armed forces. The largest U.S. Embassy in the world, with more than 16,000 officials and contractors will remain in Baghdad as well as two consulates.
Many Iraqis worry that with the U.S. forces gone, chaos will descend again.
Dislocations from the War
While there is disagreement in number of Iraqi deaths as a result of the war, “virtually all independent observers agree it is in the hundreds of thousands,” writes John Tirman, author of “The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars.”
The U.S. news media barely mentions the fate of displaced Iraqis. Tirman cites that 3.5 million to 5 million Iraqis fled their homes to either within Iraq (internally displaced persons or IDPs) or to someplace like Syria, Jordan, or Lebanon. Between 2008 and the end of June 2011, only 622,000 displaced people had returned, according to a fact sheet from the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.
Of the estimated 1.3 million IDPs, 36 percent reside in 382 settlements in Iraq, which are “in desperate need of emergency assistance, as well as protection,” according to UNHCR.
“More than half of all Iraqis live in ’slum conditions,' compared with 17 percent in 2000,” said Tirman, who is principal research scientist at MIT Center for International Studies.
The American departure will strengthen Iran’s hand in the region, writes O'Sullivan, in Foreign Affairs.
“The United States also leaves behind a region where Iran’s influence is growing. Tehran is on the offensive, as it has shown by announcing new nuclear enrichment plans, backing more aggressive attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, and allegedly plotting to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington.”
Iraq’s Shaky Democracy
The official name for this war was the War of Iraqi Freedom, but Iraqis know it by a different name, The American Occupation.
Resentment of the foreign occupiers was almost inevitable, said Ned Parker, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, who has been covering Iraq since 2003 and now is with Council of Foreign Relations. Parker said in a Public Radio International interview on Dec. 15 that U.S. forces were always seen as a “foreign force presence.” It didn’t help our standing when trying to do good, we accidentally killed civilians, he said.
Parker said he saw many alarming trends in Iraq that threaten its democracy. From the prime minister’s office of security, forces were conducting raids where people disappeared into special jails, with no contact with family or lawyers allowed. Pro-democracy protesters, in an effort to initiate Iraq’s Arab Spring by criticizing corrupt elite government officials and the lack of transparency, were attacked by plainclothes government agents and pro-Maliki supporters while the military looked on.
It has been troubling to witness the inability of Iraq to finalize a government 22 months after elections, said Michaels of USA Today. In the March 2010 election, Ayad Allawi’s party’s received more votes than Maliki’s, but not enough to form a government. The two leaders reached an American-brokered agreement in December that would allow Allawi’s party to appoint the defense minister with Maliki’s approval. But the agreement unraveled and Maliki appointed himself as both the minister of defense and interior.
“[It] has raised concerns about the sincerity of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s efforts to form a coalition representing all Iraqis,” said Michaels on Dec.14.
Very disturbing is Prime Minister Maliki’s campaign to purge hundreds of former members of the Baath Party from Iraq’s security apparatus. “The sacking and arrests of rivals and independent figures, and their subsequent replacement with loyalists, has become common practice pursued by Maliki to consolidate power and marginalize political opponents,” said the Ramzi Mardini, Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Dec. 12.
Next ... Maliki denied he had political motives
Maliki denied he had political motives and asserted that the Baathists sought to destroy Iraq’s democratic process.
“But it is difficult to square the descriptions of good security conditions in Iraq, … with the idea that mass arrests were necessary to prevent an imminent Sunni coup d'état. It is even harder to see how that alleged threat required Maliki to remove officials from the Education Ministry and fire or replace several general officers of known integrity, patriotism, and national loyalty,” wrote Kimberly and Frederick Kagan for ISW, on Dec. 12.
Maliki seems to act with impunity in defiance of the law and members of Parliament. Parker reported in July that Iraqi officials said that elite units from Maliki’s military office were operating a clandestine jail in Baghdad’s Green Zone, where prisoners are tortured to extract confessions.
Based on his visit to Iraq between May and August, Parker said at a CFR teleconference, “The politics in Iraq were becoming very polarized again, very sectarian, reminiscent of 2003, 2004 and ‘05 in the buildup to the civil war.” There is very little trust between the Shi’ite elite and Sunni leaders, and much talk about setting up autonomous regions based on the federal constitution of Iraq.
O'Sullivan said a lot of factors will determine whether Iraq goes up or down. Washington can influence some things and some things it cannot influence.
Max Boot, Council on Foreign Relations, writes: “Just as we do not know what Iraq will become under Nouri al-Maliki, we do not know what it would have been under Saddam Hussein. The fact that he is gone is a good thing. ... The fact that Iraq is developing, however slowly and imperfectly, into a representative democracy is also a good thing.”
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