A Whole New Ballgame in Iraq
US Troops Leaving the Cities
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad. There are few American patrols on the streets of Baghdad and soon there will be none. In just over two weeks time on June 30, US military forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities. The occupation which began six years ago is ending. On every side there are signs of the decline of US influence. ... The knowledge that the US forces in Iraq will go is already transforming the Iraqi political landscape, long before the exit of the last American troops. It is no longer politic for any Iraqi leader to be identified in the eyes of Iraqis with the American occupation. ...Cockburn covers the story in his unique way, trying to make sense of dozens of observations and reports about certain incidents that happen (some unfortunately very violent) and the activities and behavior of important officials. He describes tension along "a 300-mile-long unofficial frontier, of areas which are outside the boundaries of the highly autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government but have a Kurdish majority" and points to the struggle "over oil, which is being discovered in large quantities in the KRG under contacts the Oil Ministry in Baghdad denounces as illegal."
Cockburn concludes on a hopeful note, "One of the main destabilizing factors in Iraq for the last six years has been the presence of a large US army and with its departure Iraq's many simmering conflicts might just be kept under control."
I have my suspicions about the extended presence of U.S. forces and its continuing control over its central embassy palace and airport bases. Supposedly the new War Supplemental funding measure prohibits "permanent bases", but how long will they "endure"? But despite the bases and embassy, when I add up the entire picture of Iraq since 2003, I believe the U.S. did not acquire anything resembling the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld vassal originally intended.
True, U.S.-connected cleptocrats stole tens of billions of dollars of Iraqi wealth, recklessly destroyed Iraqi towns and cities, while millions in the population suffered unspeakable death, injury, and displacement. There is good reason for officials now not wanting to be seen to have anything to do with the Americans.
No clear, absolute American control of Iraqi oil seems to be in place. A U.S. attempt at privatization on behalf of Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron desired by Bush a year ago didn't fly. The Pentagon later greased a deal for Shell, but that has faced Iraqi resistance along the way as well.
The U.S. remains destined to be involved in the affairs of Iraq for years to come. But it hasn't turned out to be the model of imperialism often wrongly conceived by Americans as "liberation."
Update: The missing link to the story was added.
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