BAGHDAD: US forces in Iraq came under an Iraqi mandate yesterday, an event the country’s leader said had finally restored Iraq’s sovereignty nearly six years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
In one immediate change, US forces handed over responsibility to Iraqi troops for the Green Zone, a fortified swath of central Baghdad off-limits to most Iraqis who widely view it as a symbol of foreign military occupation.
Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki declared the day a national holiday in a ceremony at central Baghdad’s Republican Palace.
The lavish marble building looming over the banks of the Tigris — the US political headquarters in Iraq since 2003 — was handed over to the Iraqi government at midnight.
“A year ago, anyone who thought this day would happen would have been seen as a dreamer. Now the dream has come true,” Al-Maliki said.
“This is the day we have been waiting for … sovereignty has been restored,” he added.
The US force in Iraq, now more than 140,000 strong, had operated since 2003 outside of Iraqi law under a UN Security Council resolution, which expired at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
The UN authorization was replaced by one granted by Iraq’s government, giving it say over international troops on Iraqi soil for the first time since the fall of Saddam.
The pact gives US troops three years to leave Iraq, revokes their power to detain Iraqis without charge, and subjects contractors and some US troops to Iraqi law, tough terms secured last year by an increasingly confident Al-Maliki.
US troops across Iraq remain under US command but their operations must now be authorized by a joint committee. They can detain Iraqis only with a warrant from an Iraqi judge and are to leave the streets of Iraqi towns and cities by mid-2009.
Some 15,000 prisoners held at US military detention camps must now be charged with crimes under Iraqi law or freed.
The handover of the Green Zone was marked at a small ceremony on a street surrounded by concrete blast walls and razor wire, where an Iraqi band played bagpipes.
“The armed forces ... are able to take full responsibility, so ... Iraq again will be secured by the hands of its own citizens,” Defense Minister Abdel Qader Jassim told dignitaries assembled under a marquee festooned with tinsel and balloons.
Col. Steven Ferrari, commander responsible for US troops in the Green Zone, said the US military and Iraqi government would seek to cut the 14,000 US troops and private contractors working in the zone by about half over 2009.
