US's June 30 Pull Out

[Merlin]

US forces are leaving Baghdad, some earlier than June 30.

Iraq gets ready for the Yanks to go home

American forces will soon start to withdraw, leaving a power vacuum that Sunnis, Shias and Kurds hope to fill

14 June [Independent] There are few American patrols on the streets of Baghdad and soon there will be none. In just over two weeks, on 30 June, 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.

When the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, held a meeting with 300 top military commanders last week a US general who tried to attend was asked to leave. "We apologise to you, but this is an Iraqi meeting and you're not invited," he was told.

Mr Maliki, who was put into power by the US in 2006, spoke of the departure of the troops as if he had been leading an insurgency against them. "Foreign forces have to withdraw from the cities totally," he said in the course of an hour-long speech in which he mentioned America only once. "This is a victory that should be celebrated in feasts and festivals."

Given that the US is Mr Maliki's main ally, this seems to show an astonishing lack of gratitude on his part. US commanders and diplomats comfort themselves by reflecting that Mr Maliki is burnishing his Iraqi nationalist credentials in the months before the crucial parliamentary elections at the end of next January. But his public distancing himself from the US shows that he believes that anti-Americanism has a strong appeal to the majority of Iraqis. ....

[Merlin]

It is not 'some' but 'most' US troops have pulled out of cities.

Most US troops out of Iraqi cities: US commander

1 hr ago BAGHDAD (AFP) — Most US troops have moved outside Iraqi cities and the American pull-out from the country's urban centres, due by the end of the month, is on schedule, the top US commander said on Monday.

General Ray Odierno added that American forces will leave the restive northern city of Mosul as well.

"The dark days of previous years are behind us," Odierno told reporters at a press conference in Baghdad. "It is a fitting time that our combat forces move out."

He added that US forces "have been slowly withdrawing from the cities for the last six months", and said "the majority of US forces are already out of the cities".

Under a landmark security accord signed in November between Baghdad and Washington, US forces must leave Iraqi cities by the end of this month, and all of Iraq by the end of 2011. ...

[Shek]

Maliki is simply playing to take away Sadr's appeal as the "against the occupiers" candidate. I think it's less a move to appeal to anti-Americanism as opposed to simply outplaying politics with Sadr on the eve of the upcoming national elections. I haven't seen recent poll numbers, so maybe the anti-Americanism is significant, but I don't think that's the major factor here.

[Merlin]

Iraq's national election is not so soon. I think it has to be held by December 2009.

[Merlin]

One important job for the US military commander is to get the help of Syria.

US troops ask Syria to thwart al-Qa'ida offensive

17 June [Independent] The Iraqi government expects al-Qa'ida and Baathist insurgent groups to launch a wave of attacks so they can take credit for compelling the US military to leave Iraqi cities by 30 June, according to a senior Iraqi minister.

An American military team was dispatched from Baghdad to Damascus at the weekend to demand that Syria help choke off a guerrilla offensive by imposing greater control over its border with Iraq, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari revealed in an interview with The Independent.

The top US military commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, confirmed this week that the American military withdrawal from Iraqi cities would take place as agreed under the Status of Forces Agreement (Sofa) negotiated last year. Some 133,000 US troops will remain in Iraq but the knowledge that they too will be withdrawn by the end of 2011 makes Iraq a more tempting target for neighbouring states seeking to expand their influence within the country. ....

"The purpose of the US military team going to Damascus is to urge Syria to do more to prevent foreign fighters from coming here," said Mr Zebari. "According to our intelligence analysis al-Qa'ida, the Baathists and all armed groups will escalate the violence just to prove that they have won a victory. ....

[Shek]

Iraq's national election is not so soon. I think it has to be held by December 2009.

In political time, it's soon. In US terms, we're right in the heat of the primary campaigning and the strong horses are emerging.

[Merlin]

There are problems in this pull out by June 30.

Emerging Threats: U.S. envoy to Iraq calls for talks

BAGHDAD, June 19 (UPI) -- There are political solutions to the outstanding issues in Iraq despite a modest rise in the level of sectarian violence, the U.S. envoy to Iraq said.

Iraq has seen a rise in sectarian violence in recent months as U.S. military forces prepare to pull out of cities and villages by June 30 under the provisions of a bilateral security pact.

Christopher Hill, the U.S. envoy to Iraq, said there was no evidence to support claims that insurgent militias were on the rise, adding there was a marked increase in political negotiations to resolve many of the problems facing Iraq. ....

Hill noted there were many challenges ahead in Iraq apart from the June 30 military deadline. Iraq still lacks a national hydrocarbon law governing the oil sector, while a variety of disputes between the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and the Baghdad central government undermine work toward political reconciliation.

Top U.S. military commanders earlier this year expressed concern that the level of violence in some cities, notably Mosul, suggested American forces would need to stay on beyond the June 30 date. Hill, however, stuck to the deadline, saying that despite ethnic violence in the north, political solutions, not military forces, were needed.

[Merlin]

Can the Iraq security forces take over by 30 June up north?

Suicide truck bomber kills 67 in northern Iraq

BAGHDAD, June 20 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed 67 people on Saturday as they left a mosque, shortly after the prime minister urged Iraqis not to lose faith if a U.S. military pull-back sparked more violence.

Almost all U.S. soldiers will leave urban centres by June 30 under a bilateral security pact signed last year and the entire force that invaded the country in 2003 must be gone by 2012.

Saturday's attack was the deadliest in more than a year. ...

Analysts warn there may also be a spike in violence by mainly Sunni Islamist insurgents, including al Qaeda, and other violent groups ahead of a parliamentary election next January.

Hours after Maliki spoke, a suicide bomber detonated a truck filled with explosives as crowds of worshippers left a Shi'ite Muslim mosque near Kirkuk, a northern city contested by Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds that sits over vast oil reserves.

Sixty-seven people died, including women and children, and more than 200 were wounded as about 30 homes made of clay bricks disintegrated in the blast zone around the al-Rasul mosque in Taza, said Kirkuk governor Abdul Rahman Mustafa. .....

NEW TACTICS
The attacks cast doubt on the ability of Iraqi security forces to take over after U.S. troops leave. But a string of devastating bomb attacks in April was followed by what in Iraqi terms was a relative calm in May and June. ...

Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said al-Qaeda was resorting to paying people to fight for it, as well as recruiting some Shi'ites drawn by the cash. He said it had also turned to criminal activities to raise funds. ....

The sectarian bloodshed and insurgency unleashed by the invasion peaked in 2006/07, but ethnically mixed cities such as Mosul and Baquba remain dangerous. A suicide car bomber killed four policemen near Falluja in western Anbar province, once the heartland of the insurgency, on Saturday.

Baghdad has also continued to see a steady stream of bombings and shootings, and Kirkuk is viewed as a potential flashpoint for a broader conflict between Arabs and Kurds. ....

[Merlin]

Reuters have this Q & A on the issues concerning US military pull out of Iraq cities by 30 June only a few days away.

Q+A-The U.S. military draw down in Iraq

BAGHDAD, June 25 (Reuters) - A string of bombings, including one on Wednesday that killed 72 people in a Baghdad market, has cast doubt on the ability of Iraqi forces to maintain security when U.S. combat troops withdraw from Iraqi urban centres.

All but a few U.S. soldiers must leave cities, towns and villages by June 30, marking a milestone moment as Iraq reasserts its sovereignty six years after the U.S. invasion.

Here are some issues to watch going forward:

WILL AL-QAEDA TAKE ADVANTAGE?
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite Muslim-led government blames Sunni Islamist insurgents, including al Qaeda, for the bombings of mostly Shi'ite targets in the past months.

Those included the two deadliest attacks for more than a year -- 73 killed on June 20 outside a mosque near Kirkuk, and Wednesday's bombing in the capital's Sadr City slum -- making some Iraqis fear they are just a sign of things to come.

There is little doubt that the insurgents will try to exploit any vacuum left after the U.S. pullback, but their popular appeal and logistical base has been sharply reduced. ....

And while most U.S. combat troops are pulling out of towns, some will stay to train and advise Iraqi forces.

Outside the cities there are no restrictions on U.S. combat operations, though they must be coordinated with Iraqi authorities, as they have had to be since the start of the year. ...

ARE IRAQI SECURITY FORCES READY?
The performance of the Iraqi forces has been varied. In volatile, ethnically-mixed areas like Kirkuk and Mosul, U.S. troops have often been viewed as the only neutral party. ....

Analysts say some Iraqi units have impressed, like during last year's "Charge of the Knights" operation against militants in the southern city of Basra. But tackling hardcore insurgents will require top notch intelligence and quick raiding skills. ...

WHAT IF VIOLENCE SURGES?
The Iraqi government could always ask for a change in the U.S. withdrawal timetable. But this would be a bitter pill for Baghdad to swallow, since it has talked up its own abilities.

Seeking support from elsewhere, such as Iraq's Shi'ite neighbour Iran, might be just as unpalatable, said David Mack, scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington and a former U.S. deputy under secretary of state for near east affairs.

There is no guarantee, though, that Iraq would turn again to the United States. ...

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration is constrained by domestic political and financial concerns, but would not want to lose the last two years' hard won security gains. It will still have 100,000 troops in Iraq, and significant aerial power. ....

WHAT ABOUT JANUARY'S ELECTION?
Many observers see Iraq's most crucial milestone being the parliamentary election next January, rather than the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from town and cities by the end of this month.

That vote will be a defining test of whether the country's feuding factions can live together after the years of sectarian bloodshed unleashed by the 2003 U.S. invasion. ....

[Merlin]

This is the latest Iraq poll result.

Poll: Nearly three-quarters favor pullout from Iraqi cities

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A national poll suggests that nearly three-quarters of all Americans support the plan to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities and towns, even though most respondents said they think the troop movements will lead to an increase in violence in that country.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll comes Tuesday, the day of the long-anticipated deadline for American troops to pull out of Iraqi towns and cities.

The U.S. military gradually has been moving its combat troops out of Iraq's population centers for months to meet the deadline agreed to by Washington and Baghdad. ....

The United States has pulled about 30,000 troops out of Iraq since September, leaving about 131,000 troops there.

The Iraqi government describes Tuesday's pullout as National Sovereignty Day.

Seventy-three percent of Americans questioned in the poll favor the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities and towns, with 26 percent opposed. ....

[JAD_333]

Iraq Marks Withdrawal of U.S. Troops From Cities

By ALISSA J. RUBIN 8 minutes ago

Iraq’s prime minister offered assurances that security could be ensured, but a car bomb that killed at least 24 marred the public holiday. ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/wo...01iraq.html?hp

[Merlin]

Here below, Washington Post asks and ponders this question below.

Have We Forgotten Iraq?

1 July The celebrations in Iraq marking the pullback of U.S. combat forces from Baghdad and other cities stand in stark contrast to the reaction in the United States. Here the transfer of power has been met almost with public indifference, overshadowed by everything from Michael Jackson's death to the fate of President Obama's domestic agenda.

A year ago, in the heat of the presidential campaign, the issue of whether U.S. forces should stay or go produced pointed debate and disagreement between Obama and John McCain. Now, the transfer of authority for protecting the cities from U.S. to Iraqi forces has been greeted with near-universal acceptance -- if also with some trepidation over what may happen next. ...

The pullback from the cities is not, technically, a withdrawal. The United States still has roughly 130,000 troops in Iraq and will for many months. The real drawdown will not begin in earnest until after the national elections in January 2010. But symbolically, yesterday's handoff marks the beginning of a new and conclusive phase more than six years after U.S. forces invaded.

Public opinion long ago showed that a majority of Americans had concluded that the invasion ordered by President George W. Bush was a mistake. ...

As a political issue, Iraq has faded into the background, despite the sizable troop presence that remains there. The war's potency as a flash point in the political debate diminished rapidly in 2008 as the economy went into a tailspin. ...

Obama's ordered troop withdrawal has stirred little public debate. In part that's because the Iraqis are as anxious for the United States to leave as many Americans are to see the end of the U.S. commitment. ...

Unless there is a spectacular reversal there, what happens in Iraq may play out largely outside the consciousness of the American public, despite the lives lost in the war and the fact that so many troops remain stationed there. Who would have thought that was possible not so very long ago?

[Dreadnought]

Funny how many didnt want the US nor Allies there in Iraq. Now that Iraq will return to her own the rhetoric already starts. Damed if you do damed if you dont but who footed the bill and the lives that gave them what they have now. The Allied forces did thats who and we want our forces home as much as many want us to leave. We've given them the ball, now is their chance to make their own plays. Hopefully it will turn out well for the Iraqi people.

[JAD_333]

Funny how many didnt want the US nor Allies there in Iraq. Now that Iraq will return to her own the rhetoric already starts. Damed if you do damed if you dont but who footed the bill and the lives that gave them what they have now. The Allied forces did thats who and we want our forces home as much as many want us to leave. We've given them the ball, now is their chance to make their own plays. Hopefully it will turn out well for the Iraqi people.

DN:

It's not what it seems. One of the Sunday talking heads probably had it right: Maliki is calling the US pullback an Iraqi victory to co-opt Sadr's folks in the coming elections. He wants to claim credit for getting US troops to leave the cities and show that Iraqis can handle the security situation. It's old fashioned politics. Even senior US commanders there see it that way.

One interesting sidebar is that the so-called victory celebrations did not happen according to an Iraqi journalist who was there. She said the only celebrations she saw were Iraqi security forces vehicles festooned with banners, and Iraqi security forces handing out candy to kids.

[JAD_333]

Insurgents Hail Pullout of Troops From Cities

Dread:

You can put one and one together from this article to see why Maliki seems like an ungrateful wretch. He has to be on the bandwagon or appear a US puppet. For the current gov't to work it has to have all the appearances of independence from US control. As history goes this is just a short run political show. The truth will out.

Insurgents Hail Pullout of Troops From Cities

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
Published: July 1, 2009

BAGHDAD — A day after Iraqis celebrated the formal withdrawal of American combat troops from towns and cities, leaders of some of the most high-profile insurgent and opposition groups had their say on Wednesday.

Statements were released by a former senior ally of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni clerical association that has sanctioned armed resistance and Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric, all of which hailed the withdrawal as a victory for the resistance and compared it to the beginning of the revolt against the British occupation in 1920.

Iraqi opposition and insurgent leaders consider themselves to have as much legitimacy as, or more than, Iraqi government officials, and formal statements on such a symbolic occasion are expected.

The statements all commanded Iraqis to continue fighting the American military until it had left the country completely; nearly 130,000 troops remain. The statements also insisted, in unusually clear language, that Iraqis not turn their violence on one another.

This appears to be a noteworthy change for the former Hussein ally, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was deputy chairman of Mr. Hussein’s Revolutionary Command Council and who American officials say has been financing and organizing Baathist insurgents.

We “have decided in this blessed day to direct all combat effort towards the invaders,” Mr. Douri’s statement said, “and forbid absolutely the killing of Iraqis or fighting them in all the formations and organs of the agent’s authority — in the so-called army, police, Awakening and the administration agencies — except for what is required in self-defense, if some spies in these agencies try to stop the resistance or harm them.”

As recently as April, Mr. Douri had called upon people to attack the Iraqi government, which he considers a puppet of the United States.

If Mr. Douri holds to this new stance it could bolster the possibility, raised by some Iraqi and American officials, that the withdrawal of American troops removes a justification that many insurgent groups used to carry out attacks, even if those attacks disproportionately killed and injured Iraqis.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical group that has condoned attacks against the American military, issued a statement in which it condemned sectarianism and urged Iraqis to avoid harming other Iraqis. “Resistance is for all Iraqis, across the spectrum, from the north to the south,” the statement read.

Mr. Sadr, who has increasingly distanced his movement from the use of violence, was less celebratory in his statement, expressing concerns that the withdrawal was a mere “media announcement.” It would be “a bright page in the honest Iraqi resistance’s history” if it were real, he said, but he highlighted the continuing presence of American military advisers, who are allowed to stay in the cities under the security agreement between Iraq and the United States, as evidence that June 30 may not be the symbolic victory the government has suggested it is.

Mr. Sadr also said that a military withdrawal was not sufficient, mentioning the continued presence of American intelligence agencies and security contractors in particular. “We want a withdrawal, and not interference, on all fronts — political, social, economic, judicial, and ministerial,” he said in his statement. “Not only the military front.”

Also on Wednesday, the Iraqi cabinet approved one bid from a public auction on Tuesday for the rights to develop Iraqi oil fields, a government spokesman announced. A consortium of BP and China National Petroleum Company has agreed to increase output of the enormous Rumaila oil field to 2.85 million barrels a day, and will receive a $2 premium for every barrel the field produces over a baseline established by the Iraqi government.

Rumaila, in Iraq’s south, is the largest of the oil fields that were part of the auction, and its development could be a significant contribution to Iraq’s economy.

The cabinet officially rejected six other bids from the auction that asked for larger amounts than the government was willing to pay, the spokesman said.

Mohammed Hussein, Anwar J. Ali and Riyadh Mohammed contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/wo...2iraq.html?hpw