Iraq looks to life after the 'surge'

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By Jim Muir BBC News, Baghdad

Security in Iraq has improved since the increase in US troops

The last of the American combat brigades brought in last year for the US troop "surge" has now left Iraq.

The announcement coincided with a visit by the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, bringing to a head the almost feverish interest, both in Iraq and America, in the issue of US troop withdrawals.

Mr Obama has not relented on his commitment to complete a troop withdrawal within 16 months of taking office if he is elected. That would mean by the middle of 2010.

By coincidence, the first day of his visit to Iraq also saw the resumption of high-level negotiations between the US and Iraq on the future status of US troops here.

Their presence, and that of other foreign forces, is currently covered by a UN mandate that expires at the end of this year, so a bilateral accord is now being hammered out - with the distraction of a hothouse political atmosphere in the near background.

'Mistaken distraction'

Elections coming up in both countries have made the US troop presence a burning issue on both sides.

In the run-up to the American presidential poll, the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, has accused Barack Obama of getting Iraq wrong all the way through.

He says his Democratic opponent was wrong to oppose the 2003 invasion, wrong to oppose the troop "surge", and is now risking squandering its benefits and plunging Iraq into chaos by setting a fixed deadline for withdrawal.

Senator Obama argues that Iraq has been a mistaken distraction from what he describes as the main battle against terrorism, and the time has come to reduce commitments here and reinforce the effort in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama, right, has set a deadline for US troops to withdraw

On the Iraqi side, with provincial polls coming up this year and general elections in 2009, politicians are under increasing pressure to show movement towards regained sovereignty, especially now that the security situation is generally much better and Iraqi forces are playing a larger role.

Now that the surge is over, American commanders and diplomats in Iraq will pause for a period of roughly six weeks to assess and evaluate the situation before recommending any further changes.

Ending the surge brings US troop levels down from a high of nearly 170,000 to around 147,000.

That is still higher than before the extra troops were sent in, because some combat brigades rotating in are larger than some rotating out.

Significant blows

The surge is generally given a large share of the credit for the huge improvement in security in most parts of the country over the past year.

The number of attacks, and the casualties they claim, are now down to levels prevailing in 2003.

Graphs plotting attacks and casualties of all sorts from 2003 until now look something like a bowler hat in silhouette, rising from and tapering back down to the brim.

The surge enabled US and Iraqi forces to deal significant blows to al-Qaeda and related insurgent groups on the Sunni side, and to break the power of the Shia militias, notably the Mehdi Army.

The momentum of the pacification process has been bolstered by the emergence of localised Sunni groups which have turned against the insurgents and helped drive them out of their areas.

Unless there is a dramatic reversal of fortunes, the expectation is that a further modest reduction in US troop numbers will take place before the end of the year.

John McCain says Barack Obama is wrong over Iraq

What happens after that may depend both on what emerges from the current negotiations between Iraq and the US on the future status of American forces, and on who wins the presidential contest.

Although the positions of senators Obama and McCain seem far apart on paper, their different approaches might in practice produce the same results - provided that the security situation in Iraq continues to improve and the Iraqi armed forces continue to develop in capability and performance.

If those conditions are met, Mr Obama's plan to have the bulk of US combat troops out of Iraq two years from now would not be unrealistic, even if the withdrawal were purely conditions-based and not timetable-driven.

The Democratic contender has also allowed himself a safety clause by saying he would retain an unspecified number of troops in Iraq to train and mentor Iraqi forces and keep up operations against al-Qaeda remnants.

Bogged down

The US-Iraqi negotiations for a Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA) have involved a steep learning curve for both sides, and have been beset with difficulties since they began in March this year.

The US has about 113 SoFAs with other countries around the world. Normally their details are kept secret. Officials say they are immensely complicated, technical accords which usually take around two years to negotiate - and that is in times of peace, and not covering combat operations.

By June, the talks were getting bogged down and surrounded by what one official described as a "political and media swirl" of leaks, rumours and denials.

Now, short-term issues have been separated out from the long-term ones which are included in a Strategic Framework Agreement that covers the broader relationship between the two countries in economic, political and cultural fields, as well as security.

The SoFA talks have been carried up to the topmost levels in the Iraqi political spectrum, and the current hope is that they might be concluded not long after the original notional deadline of the end of this month.

But officials say there are still some tricky unresolved issues. Some focus on what the Iraqi side regards as questions of sovereignty - the authority for US troops to conduct specific combat operations, their right to detain Iraqi citizens, and whether they should enjoy immunity from the Iraqi law.

There is also the burning issue of timetables - a word that one US official close to the talks said had rapidly become "toxic".

The Bush administration has from the outset rejected the idea of cut-and-dried timetables and deadlines.

But Iraqi leaders, to borrow a golfing metaphor, need at least to see the flag on the 18th green, however many strokes it may take to get there.

The compromise, emerging out of weeks of confusion over statements, quotes, misquotes, selective quotes, corrections and denials by Iraqi leaders in particular, seems to be that any agreement will have "aspirational time-horizons" but no inflexible hard-post deadlines.

At one recent stage, the issue had become so heated on both sides that White House officials were even voicing suspicions that Iraqi leaders were exploiting the US election contest to bolster their position in the talks.

Desirable timeframes

But at the end of the day, none of the stakeholders in the current political and security processes wants to risk a collapse by sticking to a rigid timetable if the Iraqi security forces are not ready, or if insurgents or militias stage a comeback.

The desirable timeframes that are expected to be agreed would not cover specific geographical withdrawals, but two processes: handing over official security control to the Iraqis province by province (10 out of 18 have so far been transferred), and transforming of the US forces' role from combat to "overwatch" (providing training, logistics, intelligence, air support etc. to the Iraqi forces).

"In reality, the result is likely to be a document that says: 'We'd like to be at a certain point at a certain time' - rather than unqualified deadlines," said an official close to the talks.

At this stage, it is not clear what form the final agreement would take.

Officials say it could be a protocol, a memorandum of understanding, or simply an exchange of diplomatic notes.

But Iraqi leaders insist everything must be transparent and approved by parliament so that it is a "national decision".

That may make it easier for them to defend it against criticism from Iran and others. But it is unlikely to make the process of approving the accord any easier, given parliament's fractious record.