Now that Barack Obama has won, he will have to find a way of fulfilling his promise to withdraw American troops from Iraq. He and his advisers must know in their heart of hearts that this will not be easy. He has been careful to pledge a responsible withdrawal, the clear implication being that no one wants a pull-out of American troops which precipitates Iraq’s complete collapse into violence and anarchy and the spread of instability and sectarian strife into neighbouring states. Responsible withdrawal requires meeting three tough challenges.
Just to list these challenge is to indicate the magnitude of the task confronting the next administration. Parts of the Iraqi security forces have shown themselves to be weak, corrupt and loyal to sectarian militias rather than to the state. Iraqi politicians have shown a lamentable failure to produce a national accommodation. As for the neighbours, far from bolstering a weak Iraqi state, they have used Iraq to fight their proxy wars, thereby further weakening and fragmenting it. The Bush administration has had only limited success in persuading its Sunni Arab allies to normalise relations with Baghdad – and has flatly refused to engage two important neighbours, Iran and Syria, in meaningful dialogue.
The current administration was in principle committed to these three goals, but failed to pursue them with vigour or imagination. The essential difference, of course, was that it resisted the idea of a timetable for completing them, arguing that they should be pursued for as long as necessary – which meant, in practice, indefinitely – something American voters have now firmly rejected.
There is more than a little irony in the fact that an Obama administration will now be essentially following the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group – the bipartisan body headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton – whose report in December 2006 George Bush rejected. In particular, Baker-Hamilton wanted a vigorous diplomatic drive to bind Iraq’s neighbours into a regional security pact. This has not happened. Instead we have had the surge, which has brought down levels of violence especially in Baghdad and the western province of Anbar. The challenge now is to try to prolong the gains achieved by the surge – which cannot be guaranteed – and to use the new element in the equation, the arrival of an American leader with an overwhelming mandate for withdrawal, to maximum effect. As Marc Lynch argues eloquently in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, only when faced with the prospect (or threat) of American withdrawal are Iraqi politicians likely to reach a belated accommodation: as things stand, the American presence gives them an alibi for failure and procrastination.
The case for withdrawal, as made by Lynch and others, is persuasive. Even so, the risks in carrying it out – however responsibly – are considerable.
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