A clear US strategy in Iraq is urgently required to ward off a new surge of violence, but that is easier said than done, warns Saif Nasrawi Growing signs of Iraq's readiness to conclude a security accord with Washington legalising US military presence in Iraq, a plea by Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki to change the constitution to grant more powers to the central government, and a series of suicide attacks in Baghdad and other Sunni areas were all evidence of how Iraqis reacted to the election of Democratic Senator Barack Obama to be America's next president earlier this month. Those events, positive and negative, indicate to a great extent how different Iraqi factions and groups understood Obama's election and how they will fashion their actions accordingly especially when his strategy towards their country unfolds its tangible core beyond the campaign's rhetoric of reducing US troops in Iraq prior to his triumph on 4 November. On Monday, Iraqi officials revealed the latest version of a proposed draft of US-Iraqi security pact which has been under intense negotiations since March that shows an American willingness to incorporate Baghdad's most pressing demands into the deal before the 31 December expiration of the UN mandate under which US troops operate. The draft agreement clearly stipulates that US troops will withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 2009, before leaving the country entirely by the end of 2011, a concession Washington presented instead of the previous version that authorised the Iraqi government to ask US troops to stay beyond that for training and other assistance. The 24-page draft sent Thursday to Al-Maliki also strengthens language regarding Iraqi sovereignty and bans the use of Iraqi soil to attack other countries, a prerequisite the Shia-led government has sought hard in order to convince Iran, its strongest ally, that Iraq will not be used by US forces to threaten its security. And although the agreement does not appear to make significant changes in the limited legal authority granted to Iraq to prosecute US soldiers for major crimes committed off post and off duty, Iraqi officials said that signing the security deal seems now closer than ever, due partially to president-elect Obama's intention of withdrawing from Iraq within 16 months. "With Obama's election, we are now more confident that a Democratic administration will respect the withdrawal timetable," a senior Shia lawmaker told Al-Ahram Weekly on condition of anonymity. He added that Obama's agenda is similar to that of Baghdad, giving Al-Maliki's government more leverage to press the Iraqi parliament to vote in favour of the agreement when it is presented to them in the few coming weeks. Obama's election was also viewed positively by Iraq's most ardent opponents of US occupation, namely the Shia movement of cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Sunni's Muslim Scholars Association (MSA). Harith Al-Dhari, exiled head of the MSA, accused by the Iraqi government of financing the insurgency, told Al-Jazeera television the group would work with the new US administration "if it understands our demands. First of these demands is to leave Iraq," he said. "Obama shares this view with us." Besides leaving Iraq by mid-2010, Obama's cardinal strategy for Iraq focuses on two major dimensions; pressuring Al-Maliki's government to broaden the political process, and reaching out to Iraq's neighbours to help stabilise the country, especially Iran and Syria by cutting funds to insurgents, stopping smuggling weapons, and providing stricter monitoring of borders to prevent foreign fighters from entering Iraq. On Sunday, Iraq gave the nod to one of Obama's objectives when the Iraqi High Electoral Committee timetabled long-awaited provincial elections for 31 January, a key benchmark for achieving national reconciliation. Unlike the 2005 local elections boycotted by major Sunni political factions and the Sadrist movement, the upcoming elections are seen as a step further to re-shape the Iraqi political scene and provide for more political power-sharing on the municipal levels. Iraqi observers, however, warn that expecting a positive "change" in the war-torn nation after Obama's election is unrealistic, pointing to the tremendous challenges the US president-elect will face in the near future. "A quick withdrawal from Iraq is a double-edged weapon," an Iraqi political analyst, who preferred to withhold his name, said. He added that pledging to reduce US troops from Iraq might de-legitimise extremist groups like Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, but it would also provide incentives for other powerful ones to step in and fill the security vacuum. He stressed that the Shia-dominated government's confidence in the growing capabilities of Iraq's police and armed forces is misleading, and at best delusional. "The security forces are widely perceived by Iraqis as sectarian, though the Sunni and Shia insurgents have not engaged in serious fighting against the army in both southern and northern Iraq. They decided to keep their guns and personnel, awaiting the larger battle after the US withdrawal." Last summer, the Maliki government launched multiple military campaigns against Sadrist fighters in Basra, Ammara and Baghdad and Al-Qaeda operatives in Mosul and Diyala. The government declared victory in all these offensives; however, independent observers have pointed that they required massive US intelligence and air backing, and resulted in relatively few causalities on both sides, indicating that the insurgency preferred a hide-and-seek strategy rather than confrontation. What is also noticeable since Obama's election is the sudden eruption of violent attacks, suicide bombers and roadside bombs, contrary to the improving trend in security conditions during the last four months. The bloodiest wave of violence was on Monday when two car bombs exploded in central Baghdad and a suicide bomber blew himself up among police and civilians who were rushing to help the wounded, a triple strike that killed 28 people and wounded 68. That same day, a female suicide bomber killed five security patrolmen and wounded 11 other people in Baquba, capital of the volatile Diyala province. What could also complicate the "atmosphere of hope" projected by Obama's election is the standoff between ruling Shia political factions and their traditional Kurdish allies over the nature of Iraqi federalism, and the upcoming parliamentary elections in May that might end up creating a vastly new power balance. On Saturday, Al-Maliki demanded a rewriting of the 2005 Iraqi constitution to redefine the notion of federalism and grant more powers to the central government, a statement rejected forcefully by Kurdish leaders. He said that security, foreign policy and the distribution of Iraqi oil revenues should be entirely within the powers of the central government, warning that "decentralisation must not be another form of dictatorship and chaos". The prime minister's remarks echoed the rising tension between Baghdad and the Kurdish region over the actual authorities granted to each Iraqi region and the drawing of borders especially in the ethnically mixed areas. Two months ago, Iraqi army and the Peshmerga (Kurdish security forces) were on the verge of confrontation in the ethnically mixed province of Diyala over allegations that Kurdish militiamen were increasingly encroaching on Arab lands. Arab-Kurdish friction was also evident in other parts of northern Iraq especially in Mosul and Kirkuk, where Iraqi Arabs, Turkomens, and Christians accuse Kurdish forces of deliberately attempting to demographically "Kurdify" their areas as a prelude to annexing them to their current Kurdistan- controlled areas in order to affect the outcomes of local and national elections. Leaving Iraq's internal problems aside, Obama's suggested endeavour to engage Iraq's neighbours, notably Iran, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to stabilise Iraq is no less controversial. His possible manoeuvres would definitely need a very careful handling of these countries' conflicting interests. Although he promised to negotiate directly with Tehran, Iran's tough stance on its nuclear programme, its hegemony over Iraq and its heavy involvement in Lebanon and Gaza mean that the Iranians would accept nothing less than a strategic deal with Washington to secure their regional position, a situation which would be strongly resisted by Iraq's Sunni neighbours, especially Saudi Arabia, let alone Washington. The president-elect is aware that he needs the Saudis to use their leverage to pressure Iraqi Sunni forces and the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, the corner stone of his anti-terrorism strategy, to negotiate a deal to stabilise both countries and isolate senior Al-Qaeda leaders. Obama also knows that the $2 trillion of Arab Gulf reserves are crucial to ease the financial crisis he is facing at home. In a nutshell, framing a well-defined strategy for stabilising Iraq beyond the campaign's simplified rhetoric is a mission that Obama's administration must embark upon immediately; otherwise, the new administration might end up stuck with incumbent vice-president Joe Biden's infamous proposal to partition Iraq into three highly autonomous regions as an easy way out, with the nightmare that would surely lead to.
