Most of us were aware that a United Nations mandate authorizing the presence of foreign military troops in Iraq expires at the end of the year. It is for that reason that the U.S. has been relentlessly and aggressively negotiating the terms for a continued American military presence in Iraq, when that mandate expires.
Finally, last Thursday, Iraq’s Presidency Council approved the security agreement that sets the terms and conditions for a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq until the end of 2011. A nationwide referendum on the agreement is scheduled to be held in July, 2009.
That’s all well and fine, but what happens to the military forces of all other members of the multinational coalition still in Iraq? Will they have to negotiate individual agreements with the government of Iraq?
The key word here is “still,” because of the 33 original members of the “Coalition of the Willing” who provided some troops to support the occupation of Iraq, perhaps only one or two will have to worry about negotiating agreements with Iraq to retain a military presence there, after the end of the year.
According to the New York Times’ “Troop Pullout to Leave U.S. and Britain as Iraq Force,” a majority of the foreign military forces that have been part of the coalition have either already departed Iraq, or will shortly do so:
The Tongans ended their deployment on Friday, the Azerbaijanis a few days ago, the Poles last month and the Macedonians and Bosnians in the past few weeks. South Korean and Georgian troops have also left, the latter somewhat earlier than planned when fighting broke out in their country in August
In many cases these contingents have included fewer than 200 soldiers, although some, like the troops from Poland, were as large as 900.
According to the Times, this will leave in Iraq after the end of the year—in addition to the U.S.—only British troops (about 4,100 of them, mostly in Basra) and “a very small number from two or three other countries.”
In contrast to the at times acrimonious and volatile debates between the U.S. and Iraq, British lawmakers “appeared to think that if a similar agreement was reached with Britain, it would readily win approval in Parliament,” and that “because of the small number of British soldiers that will remain in the country, a formal agreement might not even be necessary.”
On a very related subject, the agreement negotiated and finalized by the Bush administration poses a real dilemma for incoming President Obama. The agreement sets a date for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq that is later than Obama had promised during the campaign. Will Obama honor the agreement? Will he try to re-negotiate it and amend it? Either way, it carries political and military risks.
This “dilemma” is examined by the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant in Watching America’s “The Dilemma That Is Iraq”
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.