False promise

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA with U.S. Army troops who had returned from Iraq, at Fort Bliss, Texas, on August 31. Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office later in the day about the plan to withdraw combat troops from Iraq.-JASON REED/REUTERS

The U.S. occupation of Iraq is not really over as claimed by President Obama, and peace and stability remain a distant hope.

PRESIDENT Barack Obama's speech on August 31, formally announcing the end of the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq, has been interpreted in the United States and elsewhere as the closure of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In his speech, Obama said: The American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.

However, more than 50,000 American troops remain positioned in five huge enduring military bases and in the major cities of Iraq. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad is as big as the Vatican and needs round-the-clock military protection. Twenty-four Black Hawk helicopters and 50 bomb-resistant vehicles are permanently posted there. The American Ambassador to Iraq boasted that along with the Great Wall of China, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is among the few human structures that can be seen by the human eye from outer space.

President Obama stressed that the American soldiers remaining in Iraq were not combat troops but were solely there for advising and assisting Iraq's security forces, supporting Iraqi troops in targeted counter-terrorism missions and protecting our civilians. Out of the 50,000 troops, some 4,500 special operations forces will continue to engage directly in military operations. Along with them are the ubiquitous contractors, numbering around a hundred thousand. In fact, a few days after Obama's speech, American troops were engaged in a firefight with the Iraqi resistance to ward off an attack on an Iraqi military outpost. The U.S. military spokesman in Iraq told the American media that despite the President's assertions, in practical terms, nothing will change in Iraq.

Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institute noted in The Washington Post on August 22 that U.S. troops will still go into harm's way, American pilots will still fly combat missions and American Special Forces will still face off against Iraqi terrorist groups in high-intensity operations. Very few Western commentators bother to remember that the previous administration of George W. Bush had to agree to the timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq after signing the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi government.

The issue of American troops in Iraq had become a political hot potato for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Many of the constituents in the ruling coalition had threatened to withdraw their support to the government over the issue. The U.S. policy of torture, extraordinary rendition, targeting of civilian homes and gunning down of innocent civilians had made the presence of American troops in Iraq highly unpopular among most Iraqis.

In his speech, President Obama praised all the unjust American wars, including those in Vietnam and Iraq. During his campaign for the presidency, he had characterised the Iraqi war as dumb. The U.S. is estimated to have spent more than $750 billion on the war in Iraq alone, a factor that played a substantial role in the country's economic decline. This figure was compiled by the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

The Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and the Harvard academic Linda Bilmes have said that the probable cost of the war in Iraq will exceed $3 trillion. In a recent article in The Washington Post, the two economists said that their earlier estimate of $3 trillion could in fact be too low. They wrote that the cost of diagnosing, treating and compensating disabled veterans of the Iraqi war has turned out to be much costlier than expected. More than 4,400 American soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands severely injured in Iraq. More than one in four U.S. servicemen deployed in Iraq require medical treatment, many of them for mental health problems. Around 250 U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq have committed suicide.

Stiglitz and Bilmes also posed a question: If not for the war in Iraq, would oil prices have risen so rapidly? Would the Federal debt be so high? Would the economic crisis have been so severe? When the U.S. went to war in Iraq, oil prices were at $25 a barrel. Prices started to soar soon after, reaching $140 a barrel in 2008.

There was no admission in President Obama's speech that the war in Iraq was fought on the basis of lies and fabrications. Instead, the President indirectly complimented his predecessor by suggesting that the military surge ordered by Bush had turned the military tide against the Iraqi resistance and stabilised Iraq. No apology was rendered to the Iraqi people for the destruction of their country and their way of life. Iraqi resources were pillaged by the invading forces, and the Bush administration was party to the rampant corruption that followed the occupation. The U.S. Defence Department has not been able to account for $8.7 billion of revenue from Iraqi oil and gas, money which was set aside for reconstruction.

The U.S. dropped more bombs on Iraq than it did during the Second World War, completely destroying the country's infrastructure. More than a million Iraqis have been killed. Iraq is a country of widows, orphans and unemployed youth. It does not generate enough electricity to meet the needs of the people and a substantial number of the population still lacks regular access to potable water. The poor security situation discourages foreign investment, wrote Professor Juan Cole, a West Asia expert at the University of Michigan.

Saddam's Iraq

Iraqis were much better off under Saddam Hussein. Despite the American sanctions on their country for more than a decade and a half after the first Gulf War, the Iraqi people had security of life. A rationing system ensured that all Iraqis got their basic food stuff. The government run by the Baath Party had also seen to it that the basic minimum needs of the people, such as water supply, electricity and health care, were taken care of.

It is the women of Iraq who are missing Saddam's rule the most. The Iraqi Constitution adopted after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958 had given Iraqi women the same rights enjoyed by their Western counterparts. After the American occupation, women's rights have been subjugated to Islamic law. Though the new Constitution, framed after the American invasion, guarantees 25 per cent representation for women in Parliament, those elected faithfully echo the conservative views of the parties they belong to.

Maha Sabria, who teaches in a Baghdad university, told the IPS news agency that the status of women in Iraq today is intrinsically linked to the deteriorating security situation after the American occupation. The violation of women's rights was part of the violation of the rights of all Iraqis. Women bear a double burden under occupation because we have lost a lot of freedom because of it, she said.

Life expectancy of Iraqis fell from 71 years in 1996 to 67 years in 2007. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said that more than half a million children had been traumatised by the war. Four million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes, and half of them have been forced to eke out a living outside Iraq. Under the iron-fisted secular rule of Saddam Hussein, sectarianism was never allowed to raise its head. Under American occupation, sectarian strife has become the order of the day. Despite the so-called success of the American military surge, more than 300 Iraqi civilians are being killed every month. In recent months, incidents of suicide bombings and Al Qaeda-style attacks on Shia processions and mosques have increased markedly.

The Iraqi resistance was never really subdued by the occupation forces. Many analysts and West Asia watchers are of the view that it was the heroic resistance of the Iraqi people that prevented the Bush administration from carrying out its grandiose plans for changing the map of the region. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton admitted in 2006 that the Bush administration could not carry out its plans of invading neighbouring Arab countries because the American Army was bogged down in Iraq. It is well known that the Bush-Dick Cheney combine wanted regime change in Syria and Iran.

Fractured polity

The results of the parliamentary elections held more than six months ago reflected the fractured state of society and politics in Iraq today. The elections had ended in a stalemate as none of the three major contending blocs could get a clear majority. The Iraqi people are left without an effective government as the major parties are unable to agree on a candidate for the top job. The Obama administration too has queered the pitch as it is pulling all strings to get its man, Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister's job. Allawi has been a known Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset and is, therefore, the man most trusted by the Americans. Allawi heads the Iraqiya bloc, which got the largest number of seats in the fractured Parliament. He owes his current standing in Iraqi politics to the Sunnis, who voted almost en bloc for him. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, of the Shia-dominated Islamic Dawa Party, is trying his best to hold on to his job but the consistent refusal of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's crucial parliamentary bloc to back him seems to have spoilt his chances.

A dark horse for the top job is Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a former communist leader. He is now a leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a constituent of al-Maliki's State of Law coalition. He has the backing of the al-Sadr bloc in Parliament. But as of now, there is little sign that a new government will be formed any time soon. There is already talk of an American-backed military coup taking place if the political uncertainty continues.