The prospect of the US troop drawdown is looming large over Iraq's ongoing political crisis, writes Salah Hemeid As rival Iraqi politicians sink deeper into political wrangling over who should form the next government, senior US officials have reiterated that the planned drawdown of US troops will start as scheduled this summer, even if no new Iraqi government takes shape. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen has said that the US military expects to reach its goal of reducing troops in Iraq to 50,000 by the end of August. He told the news channel CNN on Saturday that he was hopeful that this would stay on track despite a recent spike in the violence. Mullen pointed to the government crisis in Iraq, saying that the recount of the election results had gone well and describing the Iraqi security forces' taking control of security in the country last summer as a "significant step" forward. "Obviously, the key issue for Iraq right now is to stand up this new government," Mullen said. US Vice-President Joe Biden, who manages the administration's Iraq policies including the departure of US troops, also said that the US military would reduce troop levels to 50,000 this summer, even if no new Iraqi government takes shape. "It's going to be painful; there's going to be ups and downs," Biden said. "But I do think the end result is going to be that we're going to be able to keep our commitment." White House officials say that Iraqis are increasingly relying on politics, rather than violence, to deal with disputes, diminishing the need for US forces to stay in the country. However, the situation on the ground demonstrates that Iraq remains fractured and its political stability is still a long-term goal. Rival groups in Iraq have yet to establish a new government nearly three months after the inconclusive national elections in March. Many Iraqis have begun warning of a power vacuum in the country, as neighbouring nations work to influence the outcome. Iraqis are also worried that terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda will use the standstill to continue their campaign of violence to disrupt the political process. On Monday, four people were killed and several others wounded in separate attacks in Iraq. Among the dead was a prominent local leader of anti-insurgent Sunni forces, known as Awakening Councils, who was shot by two gunmen armed with silenced pistols. A series of blasts in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Mosul wounded 11 more people, mostly policemen and soldiers. For their part, Iraqi politicians have failed to resolve the government dispute and remain defiant regarding suggestions that a consensus candidate be found to lead the new administration who will satisfy Iraq's sharply divided sectarian and ethnic groups. No single group won an outright majority in the March elections, making a coalition government necessary. On Saturday, Shia Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki insisted that he was the only nominee from his party qualified to run the country's next government. Al-Maliki's remarks revealed an unwillingness to budge in the face of his main challenger, Sunni-backed Iyad Allawi, or his Shia partners, who want him to step down and have argued that he does not have enough Iraqi or international support to remain prime minister. Later, Allawi's Iraqiya List again called on the United Nations and the international community "to intervene quickly to protect the political process and the election results from being manipulated." In a statement the bloc argued that it had won the largest number of seats in the parliament, and therefore it should be allowed to form the new government. Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdish leaders have repeated their condition that they will only join the new government when the other blocs have agreed to hold a referendum on the future of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk and other disputed areas. The Kurdish leaders have also been insisting that the Kurdish president of the country, Jalal Talabani, keep his post and that they be given 25 per cent of the seats in the next government, even though Kurdish parties won only 57 seats in the 325-member parliament in March's elections. As the deadline for the start of the US troop withdrawal nears, the government turmoil, already rattling Iraq's fragile political system, has begun to cast a shadow over US plans. About 94,000 US troops are presently in the country, and under the Iraqi-US agreement the last are to leave by the end of next year. Although Iraqi politicians publicly say they will adhere to the agreement, it is still not clear whether rival Iraqi groups want the US to stay or to leave before they settle their disagreements. Many Iraqis are worried that Iran and other neighbouring countries will try to fill a power vacuum in the country and control its fate after the US leaves. There are also signs that American officials in Iraq may not see eye to eye on the withdrawal schedule. With the end of the US's seven-year military mission in Iraq drawing closer, American military commanders are expressing concerns about a political vacuum in the country that could undermine security gains. The commanders' main concern is that the political impasse is raising obstacles to the transition they had hoped would facilitate withdrawal plans. They have suggested that the crisis has complicated planning, because they must now wait until a new government has been formed before Iraqi ministries assume control of most programmes. Reports in the US media have suggested that US commanders in Iraq are reluctant to hand over the reins to civilians during a political transition that they see as a make-or-break period in the country. Although the presence of US troops in Iraq remains very unpopular among the US population, support for the withdrawal of US troops has dropped more than 20 points, according to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey. The survey showed that public approval of US )resident Barack Obama's plan to reduce US troops in Iraq by the end of the summer will fall if Iraq does not have a stable government by August and there is still widespread violence in the country at that time. By all accounts the administration's focus on withdrawal has provoked anxiety, as it is clear that many issues affecting Iraq's future and its relationship with its neighbours remain unresolved. Some commentators now argue that a swift US withdrawal could be dangerous. As a paper written by two American experts who visited Iraq recently argued, Iraqis seem not to have clarified their own idea of what they want. Iraqis fear that the US has no long-term strategy for future relations between the two countries, and, if it does, that it has no idea of how to achieve it, said the authors of the paper, Charles Dunne of the Middle East Institute in Washington, and Ellen Laipson, president of the Washington- based Stimson Centre. The two American experts wrote that a loss of confidence in the US will tend to reinforce self-defeating strategies among Iraqis, including reliance on ethnic and religious solidarity and avoiding compromise in the interest of communitarian self protection. The question of what the US wants from Iraq is a major preoccupation among Iraqis, the authors found. Iraqis are apparently not taking Obama's wish for "an Iraq that provides no safe haven to terrorists, a democratic Iraq that is sovereign, stable and self-reliant" as a good enough answer.
