Iraq Faces Its Future as U.S. Plans Exit

STEPHEN BIDDLE: Well, I mean, my sense of Iraqi opinion is like American opinion. People sometimes want simultaneously things that are in mutual contradiction to one another. They would like us to go. They would like the country to be stable. There is some degree of recognition that American troops assist in stability, but we're unpopular.

I think what we have in Iraq at the moment, behind the question of what Iraqis currently feel, is the early stages of a negotiated end to what had been a pretty intense sectarian civil war. And any time you end up in a situation like that - Iraq today, the Balkans in the 1990s - you end up with situations that have at once great opportunity but also real and serious risks.

I mean, lots of situations like this return to violence. It's certainly not an unreasonable fear that the situation in Iraq could either turn for the better or turn for the worse. And often, outside peacekeepers, although unpopular in many cases with the locals, play an important stabilizing role in these early unstable periods. That is essentially what we're doing in Iraq at the moment.

The question of whether we can retain the ability to continue providing what amounts to a politically unpopular but potentially necessary stabilizing role is, I think, one of the key questions at this point looking forward.

RAY SUAREZ: Ambassador, how does it look in the ruling echelons, in government circles? Is there a kind of feeling that while there are many reasons to argue for the U.S. to get ready to go, a recognition at the same time that that would be pretty complicated from a security point of view?

FEISAL ISTRABADI: I think what has happened there is - I mean, for instance, if you look at the withdrawal agreement that was signed by the Bush administration and the Iraqi government - what you have, I think, is a lot of posturing on the part of the Iraqi political class. I don't believe that the Iraqi ruling elites truly believe that there is going to be a complete withdrawal of American troops by the end of 2011.

The problem is that the Iraqis may think that there is more negotiating to be done while the Americans may think they're done negotiating and that they have an agreement, particularly with the Obama administration, which made some very specific campaign promises that it is going to have to substantially deliver on before the 2010 midterm elections, let alone before the 2012 presidential election.

So I think we may have two political elites that don't quite have a clear understanding that there are two very different dynamics going on in the two capitals. And whereas I think Maliki was posturing in advance of governate elections and parliamentary elections that are upcoming at the end of this year, the beginning of next year, I'm not convinced that he understands and that his advisors understand that the American commitment to withdraw from Iraq is a serious one.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Trudy, from what you saw, is the Maliki government acting day to day like a government? Is it in unremarkable control of the civil institutions of the state and acknowledged as such by the people that you meet on the street?

TRUDY RUBIN: Well, the Maliki government has to be differentiated from Maliki himself. Maliki's popularity, which was reflected in provincial votes, was strongest in Basra, where he cracked down on Shiite militias. And really the U.S. did the heavy lifting and rescued him from a potential debacle but let him take the credit. And in Baghdad, where he was seen as and took the credit for successful reduction in violence. So his party did very well in Basra and Baghdad.

And he gets a lot of credit for that and also for having almost cracked down on the Kurds in the north. There's a lot of Arab resentment for what's seen as Kurdish expansionism. He threatened but in the end didn't go through with it. There was a standoff but he got a lot of credit for it. So in that sense, his popularity is high.

But he isn't delivering services. In provincial elections, his party did well in those two cities but only fairly well in other provinces. And the politics are very divided. Other parties would like to get rid of him but there's no obvious substitute. Many people claim he has dictatorial tendencies. But most important, with oil prices going down, he isn't delivering the services; he isn't creating the jobs; and he isn't seen as having a competent administration.

So it's a very mixed bag. And it's also unclear whether in the long-term he can deliver the security. And in fact, along with what Ambassador Istrabadi said, he even called recently for Americans not to withdraw except in areas that are considered 100 percent secure. And I'm sure that wasn't lost on Iraqis who have heard about it. So a very mixed picture by Maliki but no obvious alternative in the wings.

FEISTAL ISTRABADI: Well, I mean, you know, this of course is the $64,000 question. I don't think any serious observer of the Iraqi security and armed forces believe that they're going to be ready in June of this year or by the end of next year to provide security in Iraq. And what happens when the Americans withdraw?

If I can comment on what was said a moment ago about Maliki taking on the militias in Basra; what he has done is taken on the Jaish al-Mahdi, the Sadrists - what we often call the Sadrist militia in Basra and in Baghdad. He has not yet taken on the militia of his principal coalition partner, in Baghdad, that is to say the militia of the Supreme Council - the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the Badr brigade. And it's not clear that he can because much of the security forces are in the hands of the Badr brigade militia hierarchy.

So we don't really have a taking on of militias in Iraq. What we have is a choosing of which militias are going to be in ascendancy in Iraq. And this is a real problem.

When American forces start to withdraw, if you still have several militias intact, which can get back to the business of slaughtering the other side's civilians, which is what we had in 2006 and 2007 - and that's my real fear for the future of Iraq in the immediate post-withdrawal.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Stephen Biddle, Dave from Bloomington, Ill., asks: "What do you think will happen if the United States withdraws all - and I mean all - troops out of Iraq by 2011?" We should note some skepticism was sounded earlier on that very point. But if all or most of the troops are out by that year, what do you think will be left behind in Iraq?

STEPHEN BIDDLE: Well, I think it would represent a roll of the dice at worse odds than I would choose if I could choose. I mean, there's some chance that a total U.S. withdrawal could be survived by Iraqis and the country will remain stable. But the odds of that happening, however, are lower than I would like.

And I think if you look at analogous situations, other sectarian civil wars ended by negotiation, did they return to violence or not, in many cases, the ones that remained stable had a peacekeeping presence far longer than what would be the case if the United States were to withdraw completely by 2011.

Again, nothing is guaranteed in this business, either negative or positive. But I think the odds here are not as great as I would like. Normally speaking, you would prefer a longer peacekeeping stay than that. But it needn't be a peacekeeping stay at today's troop levels. Typically - again, if you use the Balkans as an analogy - what you get is a long, slow, gradual drawdown in which reductions are possible. But if some presence continues, you can stabilize that reduction to the point where it reduces the odds that things blow up again. That's the kind of trajectory that I would prefer, other things being equal for Iraq.

Now, we're operating in the context of a negotiated agreement with the Iraqis, which if not reopened does call for a remarkable drawdown of U.S. troops. There would be fewer U.S. troops in 2012 in Iraq than there are in Britain or anywhere else where we have an embassy for that matter. So in many ways, its' a remarkable document. If it isn't reopened, there's very little freedom of choice here though. So people like me may say I would rather have more troops there longer, but as long as that Status of Forces Agreement remains binding, that's what we're going to get.

RAY SUAREZ: John from Shelton, Wash., asks: "The Rumsfeld-Bremer decision to disband the Iraqi army is widely regarded as a mistake. Was it?" And I'd like to hear from all three of you on this. Trudy, why don't you start us off?

TRUDY RUBIN: I absolutely think it was a mistake. I was in the audience when Bremer made that announcement. And immediately afterwards, I went with a colleague to a neighborhood of Baghdad where officers lived, and we went door to door. And uniformly, they said the same thing to us - even Shiite officers. We stood down. We didn't fight you. And this is the reward we get, not even a pension. And many of them said, we're going to fight you. And I think that was a terrible mistake that helped lead to the ensuing chaos.

RAY SUAREZ: Ambassador?

FEISTAL ISTRABADI: In the third week of May 2003, representing my boss at the time, Dr. Adnan Pachachi, who was later to be appointed the presidency of the Iraqi governing council, I sat in the office of Ambassador Mark Grossman, the under secretary of state for political affairs. I said to him, this decision to disband the Iraqi army and the security forces, it was a decision the United States and Iraq will regret for years to come.

I'm sorry to say but the last six years have proven that that statement was accurate and prophetic. I will say, I wasn't particularly a prophet. It was so bloody obvious to anyone who understood Iraq, what a cataclysmic that was. The army - senior officers of the army were standing by. They were in negotiations with the Americans. They were preparing to recall the troops. You could have tried to secure Iraq's borders. You could have lowered the profile of the United States in the cities. It was a catastrophic decision, which I still - six years later - cannot understand and cannot fully describe.

RAY SUAREZ: Stephen Biddle?

STEPHEN BIDDLE: Well, I would certain agree with Trudy and the ambassador. I was in Iraq in April 2003 and had the opportunity to speak to some, then-interned prisoners-of-war - Iraqi officers who had been commanding forces during, of course, the invasion. They were being treated like criminals. They were imprisoned. They were in pens. They had very little in the way of normal civil liberties, at the time.

And it struck me, at the time, that we were taking the people who had played by the rules and surrendered. They had done what the United States had asked of them. They had turned themselves in; they hadn't simply blended into the country, tried to disappear or continued resistance. These were people who had followed the rules. They should have been thought of as the basis of the new Iraq, the basis of the new security force that would stabilize the country.

Instead, they were being treated like criminals and they were really quite embittered about it within a month after the end of the fighting. That just set a general trend of misunderstanding the nature of the society, the structure of the government and the structure of the Iraqi military that served us very badly in subsequent years

FEISAL ISTRABADI: There is a, I'm sorry, I can think of the Arabic expression; I can't think of the - how to translate it in English. Let me try again. There has been a particularly negative reaction, in my opinion, amongst a majority of Iraqis to the role that the neighbors have played in Iraq, in particular, Iran. They have played, in fact, a very negative role. Their intelligence services have been operating in Iraq, contributing to much of the chaos. This is particularly true of Iran.

Syria was the channel through which much of the al-Qaeda insurgency, or whatever you want to call it, traveled into Iraq. They would get on airplanes in places like Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, arrive at Damascus International Airport and be transported through the Syria-Iraq border into Iraq. The party that is closest to Iran in the Iraqi political spectrum is, again, the supreme council - the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

They were handed a huge electoral defeat in the elections in January. I think the Iraqis truly are sick and tired of the interference of our neighbors in our affairs. I think that the current deputy prime minister of Iraq summarized the feelings of Iraqis about our neighbors when he said, at the Davos conference in 2008, that he wished that Iraq was a Pacific Island nation, because then it would have no neighbors.

RAY SUAREZ: But Trudy, isn't there a negative role that can be played by these neighbors as we move forward from here? Don't you need them on-board, even if you don't need them in Iraq?

TRUDY RUBIN: I agree with Ambassador Istrabadi. I think if you talk to Iraqis - certainly, if you talk to Iraqi officials - the foreign minister or his deputies - the feeling is that, left to their own devices, the neighbors would simply pursue their own interests over the body of Iraq and within the body. And I think that's one of the reasons why, were there too rapid a withdrawal or a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in the short term, a power vacuum would be filled by the neighbors playing games.

That doesn't mean that there isn't room for discussions with the neighbors about playing a less obstructive role. But of course, the United States tried to do that for some time with Iran and didn't get too far. I don't think it's out of the question to have a group of neighbors that talk about helping to stabilize, not destabilize Iran - I'm sorry, Iraq - but Iraq has to be the major player in those discussions. It can't be done over the heads of Iraqi officials, because Iraq has a right to be suspicious of those neighbors' intentions.

RAY SUAREZ: Stephen Biddle, dovetailing with Trudy's point, David asks from New York: "What's happened to the regional compact Mr. Obama proposed during the election campaign? It was to be a general treaty among all Iraq's neighbors agreeing not to intervene in that country. Its purpose was to forestall the kind of regional war that might ensue if the U.S. withdrew. So far, we've seen bilateral diplomacy in the region, but no suggestion of a regional compact. Shouldn't the U.S. make these arrangements before starting to withdraw?"

STEPHEN BIDDLE: Unfortunately, there are separate timetables at work here. The withdrawal timetable is operating according to its own logic, partly due to negotiated agreements with the Iraqis, partly due to policy decisions within the administration. There is also a diplomatic track ongoing bilaterally with Iraq's neighbors, to be followed, one hopes, with a broader, regional approach, perhaps some sort of a contact group, to help manage the consequences of U.S. drawdown.

The pace the U.S. would drawdown is within U.S. control, subject to the limits of bilateral negotiations with Iraqis. The pace of diplomacy in the region is much less so, and unless we're very careful, there's a distinct possibility that the pace of drawdowns could outstrip the pace of negotiations and diplomacy. I think that would be unfortunate, but then again, I'm also, by and large, in favor of slower drawdowns. So I think that's wise for any number of reasons.

But clearly, if we're going to be less of a military and security presence in Iraq, it will be increasingly important that we manage as actively as we can the problem of the relations among Iraq's neighbors with Iraq, obviously subject to the overwhelming priority preferences of the Iraqis themselves, to limit the amount of interference that goes on. But again, at the moment, at least, these tracks seem to be moving on their own independent pace.