Withdrawal of US troops from Iraq
Ayaz Ahmed Pirzada
The American combat troops withdrew from Iraqi urban areas in on June 30
as a follow up of an agreement between the governments of the two
countries. Celebrations held by the government on the occasion were
marred by killing of 26 people in Kirkuk cautioning, Prime Minister
Maliki over future shape of events in the country which has seen six
years of deaths and destruction. President Obama on Feb. 26, 2009,
declared the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq.Most of the 142,000
troops now in Iraq would be gone by the summer of next year, leaving
35,000 to 50,000 to train and advise Iraqi security forces, hunt
terrorist cells and protect American civilian and military personnel.
These troops too will leave by 2011. The withdrawal plan would provide
some relief to Americans, who till June 30,lost 4321 lives and 37512
wounded .Among the wounded thousands are those who incurred permanent
disabilities .The cost of totally unnecessary war at the tax payers
expense in Iraq is colossal ($683. 290. 000 .000 up to July 1, 2009) and
this would continue to increase as long as the foreign troops stay in
Iraq. No body knows how many Iraqi were killed by the invading forces
but if and when independent commissions are allowed to visit the
country, the figure would surely hover around hundreds of thousands. The
ghastly images of bombing of Baghdad, cities like, Al-Anbar, Ar-Ramâdî ,Najaf,Basra,
palaces, civilian neighborhoods , bridges, air bases, suspected sites of
chemical weapons and last but the least , pulverization of entire city
of Fallujah are deeply ingrained in the minds of people.
A systematic public relations and diplomatic campaign was launched soon
after the horrifying incident of 9/11 to present a case to the Americans
and the world for an attack on Iraq. Iraq was not involved in any in the
9/11 but President Bush began to press the case for an American-led
invasion of Iraq soon after outing Talibans from Afghanistan. Saddam
Hussein was accused of seeking nuclear, biological and chemical weapons
in defiance of United Nations restrictions and sanctions and having link
Iraq to Al Qaeda . Both claims have since been largely discredited,
though some Americans officials and analysts continue to argue
otherwise, saying that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posed a real and imminent
threat to the region and to the United States. ‘The very premise of
invasion of Iraq that Iraq had WMD’s was proved wrong. Former White
House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the
Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated “political
propaganda campaign” led by President Bush and aimed at “manipulating
sources of public opinion” and “downplaying the major reason for going
to war.” McClellan stopped short of saying that Bush purposely lied
about his reasons for invading Iraq .
President Bush announced the declaration of war from the Oval Office on
the night of March 19, 2003, declaring that the United States would “not
live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with
weapons of mass murder.” Right at that moment Baghdad was rained with
latest and most lethal bombs killing hundreds of civilians in initial
air attack in different localities of the Iraqi capital. Bob Woodward,
author of Water Gate in his latest book said, ‘Bush did not understand
the nature of the Iraq war, that the president focused too much on body
counts as a measure of progress.’ The Iraqi government was routed soon
after the invasion of Baghdad by coalition forces. Few lament Saddam
Hussein’s passing, but the war has left Iraq a broken country, made the
United States more vulnerable, not safer, and stretched the American
military to a point that compromises its ability to fight elsewhere.
Hanging of Saddam Hussein in a sordid and bizarre procedure adopted by
the Maliki Government is still reverberating in the minds of people. The
Iraqi Government and the Americans authorities in Iraq cannot easily
extricate from intrigue and confusion that preceded the execution of
Saddam Hussein and what happened at the hanging, as evidenced in
official and private video recordings made before Hussein fell through
the gallows He was hanged on December 30, 2006 for ordering the massacre
at Dujail in 1982 though list of his crimes is long including Anfal
campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s, the genocidal assault on
the Marsh Arabs in the 1990s, and the slaughtering of the Arabs and
Kurds who rose up against him, with American encouragement in 1991.He
turned ethnic engineering and murder into an industry in the 1970s.
During the 1980s, entire towns, including Qala Diza in Iraqi Kurdistan
and Qasr-i-Shirin in neighboring Iranian Kurdistan, were destroyed. Much
more details of these horrible crimes could have been known if Saddam
was not hanged. Sectarian violence was unleashed after the overthrow of
the government .Thousands were brutally killed in a frenzy of
sectarianism. For centuries Shia-Sunni relations in Iraq had been
congenial, highlighted by inter- marriages and paying of homage to holy
shines in Karbela and Najef by both the sects. Sectarian violence is the
tragic consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Until
the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation, Iraq had maintained a
long-standing history of secularism and a strong national identity among
its Arab population despite its sectarian differences. Top analysts in
the CIA and State Department, as well as large numbers of Middle East
experts, warned that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could result in a violent
ethnic and sectarian conflict .The Maliki government would have to go
extra mile in its efforts to forge the spirit of tolerance amongst
different sects to give Iraq semblance of a unified nation.
The Americans would leave Iraq where rampant corruption ,
maladministration violence, disputes are over boundaries, oil and the
power of Iraq’s central government. Jawad Al Bolani, Interior Minister
of Iraq in an article in WP Post(June 30) has said,’ My ministry alone
has fired more than 60,000 employees on corruption charges and concerns.
This month we announced that more than 40 police officers would face
charges after an investigation into prison abuse found that inmates had
been incarcerated without warrants and that the rights of other inmates
had been violated.’ The most dangerous dispute however is over control
of the oil-rich, multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk and the surrounding
province. In April, the United Nations issued a report with several
options for Kirkuk, including making it an autonomous region jointly run
by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens .
The problem of refugees one of the war’s great tragedies which has
forced flight of an estimated four million Iraqis - more than one out of
10 - from their homes. A small number, perhaps 100,000, have begun
trickling back; a still smaller number have been permanently resettled
abroad. Millions live under extremely difficult conditions. These are
the challenges the Makili government has to grapple with every day
.Performance of his government would be closely monitored by Iraqi
leaders and the Americans till they finally leave Iraq. Bob Woodward
,Washington Post associate editor in a new book says that the Bush
administration has conducted an extensive spying operation on Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his staff .A source told him,’ we know
everything’.
The Americans hoped that a clear timetable for an American withdrawal
would finally persuade Iraq’s leaders to make the political compromises
that are the only way to hold their country together without an
indefinite occupation. That has not happened. The Parliament has still
not passed a law to divide Iraq’s oil resources equitably. An American
author has said, ‘the fall of Iraq’s brutal, powerful dictator unleashed
a wave of celebration, then chaos, looting, violence and ultimately
insurgency. Rather than quickly return power to the Iraqis, including
political and religious leaders returning from exile, the United States
created an occupation authority that took steps widely blamed for
alienating many Iraqis and igniting sectarian violence.
Many Iraqis see American soldiers as occupiers not liberators that’s why
they celebrate when US troop pullout .A symbolic dislike for American
administration was the throwing of shoes at President Bush when he made
a farewell visit to Iraq. “In December 2008, Mr. Bush made a valedictory
visit to Iraq, his fourth trip to the country he liberated from Saddam
Hussein’s rule and then plunged into bloodshed. The visit, intended to
celebrate the new security agreements and the newly confident Iraqi
sovereignty implicit in them, was instead overshadowed by an Iraqi
journalist during Bush’s press conference with Primer Maliki. Muntader
al-Zaidi, a television correspondent, hurled first one shoe, then a
second at President. Bush, who ducked and narrowly averted being struck.
Hurling a shoe is insult enough, but Mr. Zaidi also shouted: “This is a
farewell kiss, you dog.”
The writer is Columnist/Analyst/Former Diplomat
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