The Status of Forces Agreement and its implications

Thomas Donnelly, of the American Enterprise Institute, in Congressional testimony yesterday discussed the long term implications of the Status of Forces Agreement. His words are insightful and should be heeded.

In the past five and half years we gone to great lengths to establish a democracy in Iraq, but in the process, tough as it was, we have turned an avowed rogue nation into a future ally in the region. If we continue on this path we should see a country who can be looked upon in the region as an example of a representative democracy. If this is done all our sacrifices will have been worth it.

Donnelly's testimony follows:

I would like to begin by thanking the Chairman and ranking Member for this
opportunity to testify on an issue I believe to be critical to America's
strategy and military force posture not only in Iraq but the broader Middle
East.
Since the committee invited me to appear, there has been excellent
news: the approval by the Iraqi cabinet of a strategic framework and
status-of-forces agreement, defining the role of U.S. military in Iraq when
their current UN mandate expires at the end of the year, represents a tremendous
success for the United States and for a free Iraq. Word out of Baghdad is
that the Iraqi parliament will ratify the agreement by the end of the
month. If so, U.S. forces in Iraq will avoid the plague of legal
uncertainty and will be free to continue their effective operations without
having to worry about a potentially debilitating debate in the United States or
at the United Nations. These developments also free me to talk about the
larger issues and interests at stake.
To focus, as the media have done, on
the timetable for withdrawal of American troops at the end of 2011, is to miss
the forest for a single tree: agreements such as these define the relationships
between nations that are strategic partners, based upon their sovereignty but
recognizing shared geopolitical interests. Five and one-half years is a
long time, and the United States has paid a high price in blood and treasure,
but make no mistake, this is what we have been fighting for: an Iraq with an
increasingly legitimate, effective and representative central government; an
Iraq increasingly aligned with the United States instead of constantly at war
with us; and a bulwark of strategic stability in a volatile region.
The
agreement itself protects vital immediate and enduring U.S. interests in
Iraq. To begin with, allowing the UN mandate to expire without at least a
bridging arrangement permitting U.S. operations in Iraq to go forward would have
been a disaster, risking the loss of the initiative so arduously won during the
"surge season." And, as successful as U.S. operations have been and as
marked as Iraqis' rejection of extremist elements has been--both in regard to al
Qaeda and Sunni jihadis but also Iranian influence and Shi'ite militias--the
situation remains fragile. The fundamental truth that everyone in
Washington, Baghdad and the larger region know but rarely acknowledge publicly
is that the surge represented, above all, a renewed American commitment to
success in Iraq. This agreement is one of the fruits of that strategic
decision.
Likewise, the agreement represents a serious setback for
Iran. The Islamic Republic has lost and apparently still is losing
influence in Iraq. The Tehran regime has been vehemently opposed to this
agreement, strongly pressuring the Maliki government and portraying the
negotiations as evidence of U.S. and Western neo-colonialism. When Prime
Minister Maliki visited Tehran this past June, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei lectured Maliki on the subject, and pressed the Iraqis for a
"memorandum of understanding" on defense cooperation. Maliki has remained
steadfast, and his position has been immensely strengthened since he launched
Operation Knight's Charge in Basra last March, cleaning out Shi'ite militias and
Iranian "special group" operators. Maliki clearly has the votes
within the Shi'ite bloc in the Iraqi parliament--despite the fact that his Dawa
party has itself only 15 votes in the 275-member body--as well as the Kurdish
bloc, to ensure approval by the end of the month, when the Iraqi parliament
adjourns for the hajj season.
Tehran also intensely lobbied and,
reportedly, even bribed Iraqi politicians to oppose the agreement. More
broadly, the Iranian government has been sponsoring an extensive propaganda
campaign since last May, playing to Iraqi nationalism--although Iraqi
nationalism more traditionally has a strong anti-Iranian flavor--and circulating
rumors that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, arguably the most revered figure in
all of Shi'a Islam, opposed the pact. In early October Maliki visited the
reclusive cleric in Najaf to discuss the agreement, and recently, an Iraqi
parliamentary delegation returned this past weekend with what one of the
ayatollahs' spokesmen described as a "green light" of support from Sistani, thus
thoroughly undercutting Tehran's position. Ayatollah Sistani went further
to say that a majority vote in the parliament would represent the will of the
Iraqi people, a critical expression of support for the democratic process and
additional embarrassment to Tehran.
Nearly as important, the agreement is a
defeat for the firebrand Iraqi cleric Moqtada as Sadr, whose populist movement
has been losing support for more than a year. While the Sadrist bloc in
the Iraqi parliament continues to oppose the agreement, Sadr himself has been
increasingly marginalized and, the combined U.S.-Iraqi operations in Baghdad's
Sadr City slum have decimated the leadership cadres of Sadr's militia, the
so-called Jaysh al-Mahdi, or "Mahdi Army." In sum, the Iraqi government
has made remarkable strides in the wake of the American surge, even if these
strides have been one a different timetable and come from different quarters
than we anticipated 18 months ago.
Looking forward, there are reasons to hope
for a continued transformation of the U.S.-Iraqi partnership. The upcoming
Iraqi elections are nearly certain to bring to power a more responsive and
representative group of legislators, especially from the Sunni community.
This will also be critical to the successful implementation of the agreement, as
in many ways it is the Sunnis who have most at stake in a continued U.S.
engagement in Iraq. To repeat: stability in Iraq is fragile and the path
of progress depends upon additional accommodation between Iraq's
communities. Americans in Iraq have never been simple "occupiers;" our
current and future role should be to serve as "interlocutors," the most
trustworthy arbiters among people who have had little reason to trust each
other.
And so, despite press coverage and political rhetoric in Iraq, I am
less certain about what will happen at the end of 2011; the language about
future U.S. presence in Iraq has been stricken from the agreement, but the
potential need endures. The Iraqi government will not want to regard this
framework agreement and any status-of-forces rules as a suicide pact. The
Iraqi army well knows, and its leaders have often said, that its ability to
sustain itself--operationally, logistically, administratively, personnel-wise,
institutionally--is limited, and it is a real question whether it will be mature
enough in three years' time to do without the partnering presence of U.S.
forces. The Iraqi army is the most trusted institution of the new Iraqi
state and we would be fools to take excessive risks in the service of an
arbitrary timetable.
I hope the Obama Administration takes a similar
approach: a campaign pledge in not a suicide pact, either. While it is
impossible to know precisely what circumstances in Iraq or the region will be
three years from now, it is certain that the United States will have important
strategic interests in the Gulf and throughout the Islamic world. These
interests predated 9/11 and go well beyond terrorism; we have been a party to
the "Long War" for at least a generation and, arguably, since Franklin Roosevelt
met Saudi King Abdul Aziz about an American warship in February 1945. As
CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week, Iraq may no longer be--thanks to
American and Iraqi efforts of the past 18 months--the "central front," but
Iraq's critical importance to regional security is in no way diminished.
I would also hope this committee and the Congress will keep an open
mind. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was the region's most constant menace;
today, Iraq is arguably our most constant ally--though I would admit that, in
this region, this is a lamentably low standard. Certainly the Iraqis have
made immense sacrifices to create the prospect of a better future for themselves
and we should not forget that. Dealing with the Maliki government and
other Iraqi leaders is not easy and this agreement won't be an end to the
challenges. At best, this marks the end of the beginning of a long-term
strategic partnership with an Iraq where representative government has put down
real roots. But it must not be the beginning of the end of America's
engagement with and commitment to a free Iraq. There is a corollary to
former Secretary of State Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn Rule." We broke it,
and we've done much to fix it--we don't want to see it smashed to pieces again

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