If the Iraqi Parliament on Wednesday votes to allow American troops to stay in Iraq for three more years, it will be legitimizing the occupation and infringement on their national sovereignty. The agreement is hailed by both Baghdad’s government and the Bush administration as a historic deal, necessary, they claim, to help sustain stability and security until Iraq was able to build its own army and police force.
But even as they argue that Iraq’s security forces are not ready to stand on their own, Washington and Baghdad both agree that the insurgency — of which the US is to blame for instigating — is losing steam. So which is it? If anything, the pact will serve to further divide Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic groups, now vying to consolidate their power bases ahead of next year’s local and parliamentary elections. Supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, who include 30 MPs, have opposed the deal from the start.
The thousands of Sadr supporters who gathered in Baghdad over the weekend to protest against the accord will not suddenly dissipate, and will become more vocal and angrier in the days and weeks ahead. The agreement has raised concerns among Iraq’s neighbors, especially Syria and Iran. Have they received assurances that the pact will not be used against any third party and that their interests will be protected?
Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and his top ministers are struggling to rally support for the pact, but their hopes of winning a wide margin of approval to ensure the deal’s legitimacy is fading.
Their desperateness to ram the deal home has been barely concealed by the fact that Parliament members were given days, not months, to study and debate the deal. Negotiations were conducted in secrecy without their input.
And how much will Iraqis pay for the US troops to stay in Iraq? In politics, nothing comes without a price, including this particular issue. American troops in Iraq costs the US economy $10 billion a month. So is Iraq to be billed $360 billion for the duration of the agreement?
It makes no sense to approve a deal with a US administration that has less than two months in office. It would have been better had they waited for a Barack Obama presidency which wants out of Iraq as fast as possible, quicker than what the deal stipulates.
After more than five years of war, the sooner American soldiers are out of Iraq the better.
With US soldiers out, Iraq may disappear from the front pages of American newspapers, though this will not mean that calm and peace will prevail in the beleaguered nation. But the longer American troops remain in Iraq, that day of stability remains a longer way off.
There is a feeling that all the clauses of the security deal have not been revealed. The point not to be missed here is that this is a deal imposed by an occupying power and the government in Baghdad had no alternative to endorsing it if it wanted the US troops to leave the country entirely by the end of 2011.
