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OPINION GUEST ESSAY Why Are American Troops Still in Iraq? Feb. 10, 2022 Credit...Pool photo by Mario Tama By Trita Parsi and Adam N. Weinstein Mr. Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where Mr. Weinstein is a research fellow. U.S. troops in Iraq quietly thwarted two separate drone attacks on bases hosting American soldiers in the first week of 2022. The attacks, attributed to Iraqi Shiite militias, are no surprise: America’s presence in Iraq is increasingly unwelcome. More attacks are bound to come as long as the Biden administration decides to keep forces there. With each passing day, the risk of a deadly attack increases. And for what? The presence of U.S. troops won’t stop terrorist attacks from happening and they can’t contain Iran, which has cemented its hold on some Iraqi military institutions since 2003. American soldiers are likely to die in vain because, just as in Afghanistan, they have been given the impossible task of acting as an ephemeral thumb on the scale of a foreign country’s politics. Americans must ask themselves: Is this worth it? The United States withdrew from Afghanistan last year because its presence there no longer served its interests. Neither does staying in Iraq. The U.S. experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq made painfully clear that there is no magic number of American troops that can eradicate terrorism. The roughly 2,500 in Iraq certainly cannot. While Washington’s foreign policy establishment wrings its hands about the risks of leaving, it appears to be ignoring the clear costs of staying. President Biden stated that his decision to leave Afghanistan was not just about Afghanistan. “It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries,” he proclaimed. That era will not truly end until the United States has withdrawn all of its forces from Iraq. Mr. Biden should announce plans for a phased troop withdrawal beginning no later than this spring. It should be closely coordinated with Iraqi, regional and European partners. The specter of a backlash at home, similar to the criticism over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, will weigh heavily on Mr. Biden. But if he doesn’t act, attacks on U.S. troops will inevitably increase, making it politically more difficult to leave while simultaneously increasing the risk of the United States getting dragged into a larger conflict in the event of a miscalculation or provocation by a brazen militia, Washington or Iran. Two decades of a failed and costly strategy in Afghanistan made the decision to leave an obvious one. But the case for leaving Iraq is even stronger. Many elected leaders in the Iraqi political system that Washington helped spawn want U.S. troops to depart the country. The fact that their presence has not been a subject of intense domestic debate shows how inured we’ve become to a long military presence abroad. Proponents of staying in Iraq argue it is crucial to collect intelligence on terrorist groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda and prevent an adversary from filling any “vacuum” resulting from a U.S. departure. Nearly identical arguments were made in the case of Afghanistan. But the truth is that the U.S. presence has helped fuel insurgencies in Iraq. Al Qaeda, and later, the Islamic State, were able to take advantage of their gains against the state and the chaos that ensued. Iraq’s neighbors will always have a greater interest in the country’s future than the United States does. Moreover, the argument that troops are needed to combat the Islamic State — as in the recent raid that resulted in the death of the Islamic State’s leader in northwestern Syria (a country with a small U.S. military presence of its own) — does not hold up. Iraq and neighboring countries that fought the group are increasingly capable of preventing a significant resurgence on their own. Pursuing “ISIS zero” is a recipe to stay in Iraq forever. As in Afghanistan, the rationale for the U.S. military presence in Iraq was a naïve hope that our soldiers could kill faster than our enemies could recruit. This dysfunctional strategy led to a hollow Afghan government that dissolved before our eyes as soon as the United States lifted its thumb off the scales. In Iraq, it helped give rise to the Islamic State. Iraq’s government is unlikely to fall apart with the departure of U.S. troops. Though divisions between and among Iraq’s sectarian groups have diminished the ability of the state to serve its citizens, the government itself is not delegitimized or weakened beyond repair, as was the case in Afghanistan. And as unsavory as they are to the United States, the powerful Shiite militias also view the Islamic State as an existential enemy, and have fought it with immense fervor. U.S. troops in Iraq ended their combat mission in December. The Biden administration has since assured Americans that the troops that remain in Iraq are there in a strictly advisory capacity. But we have been down this road before. As 2014 closed, President Barack Obama similarly declared that “our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending” and we would shift entirely to a “train, advise and assist” mission. Yet it took 107 more U.S. deaths, 612 American soldiers wounded in action, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and six more years for American operations to truly end. The United States does not have the answer for Iraq’s woes. It cannot allay the frustration of Iraqis over an unresponsive government and political violence; it is ill equipped to mediate between Iraq’s competing factions or untangle the web of crisscrossing interests that stymies progress. Nor can it change the reality that some of Iraq’s most powerful political blocs see their interests reflected in Iran while others feel sidelined. Even Iran lacks the ability to control Iraq’s infighting and the brazen antics of power-hungry militias, a reality that a former acting and deputy director of the C.I.A., Michael Morell, warned the Senate about in June 2020. Pulling out of Iraq is unlikely to be trouble-free. But with the withdrawal from Afghanistan still visible in the rearview mirror, Iraqi partners may actually prepare for U.S. troops to leave this time around. The price of inaction is to force U.S. soldiers to be sitting ducks in a geopolitical tinderbox.

Iraq, Struggling to Pay Debts and Salaries, Plunges Into Economic Crisis Oil-rich Iraq, its economy hobbled by neglect and corruption, has devalued its currency and had its imported electricity cut off for nonpayment The Shorja market in Baghdad last month. The market has experienced a downturn in sales due to a national financial crisis and the pandemic.Credit...Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters By Jane Arraf Jan. 4, 2021 BAGHDAD — In the wholesale market of Jamila, near Baghdad’s sprawling Sadr City neighborhood, a merchant, Hassan al-Mozani, was surrounded by towering piles of unsold 110-pound sacks of flour. “Normally at a minimum I would sell 700 to 1,000 tons a month,” he said. “But since the crisis started we have only sold 170 to 200 tons.” His troubles are a ground-level indicator of what economists say is the biggest financial threat to Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s time. Iraq is running out of money to pay its bills. That has created a financial crisis with the potential to destabilize the government — which was ousted a year ago after mass protests over corruption and unemployment — touch off fighting among armed groups, and empower Iraq’s neighbor and longtime rival, Iran. Iran in the past has taken the opportunity posed by a weak Iraqi central government to strengthen its political power and the role of its paramilitaries within Iraq. With its economy hammered by the pandemic and plunging oil and gas prices, which account for 90 percent of government revenue, Iraq was unable to pay government workers for months at a time last year. Last month, Iraq devalued its currency, the dinar, for the first time in decades, immediately raising prices on almost everything in a country that relies heavily on imports. And last week, Iran cut Iraq’s supply of electricity and natural gas, citing nonpayment, leaving large parts of the country in the dark for hours a day. “I think it’s dire,” said Ahmed Tabaqchali, an investment banker and senior fellow at the Iraq-based Institute of Regional and International Studies. “Expenditures are way above Iraq’s income.” Many Iraqis fear that despite Iraqi government denials there will be more devaluations to come. “Everyone is afraid to buy or sell,” said Mr. Khalaf, who turned to business when he couldn’t find a job with his degree in sociology. Image Money changers and customers at a foreign currency exchange market in Baghdad last month, when Iraq devalued its currency.Credit...Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters Mr. al-Mozani, 56, the merchant in the Jamila wholesale market, imports flour from Turkey in dollars, until recently selling it for about $22 per sack. In response to the currency devaluation, he raised the price to $30. A restaurant manager who popped in to ask about the new price of flour, Karam Muhammad, said there was not much demand for the flour. Restaurants, he said, have been mostly empty because of the pandemic and the financial crisis. In a stall off a narrow, winding alley of the Shorja market, one of Baghdad’s oldest, Ahmed Khalaf sells the smallest luxuries: nail polish, plastic hair barrettes, colored pencils. Even during the pandemic, by midmorning the stalls in Shorja market would normally be thronged with shoppers buying food staples and household goods. But last week the aisles were nearly empty. “Our customers are mostly government employees, but as you can see they’re not coming,” said Mr. Khalaf, 34. While the currency devaluation took most Iraqis by surprise, the economic and financial crisis has been years in the making. Public sector salaries and pensions cost the government about $5 billion a month, but its monthly oil revenue recently has reached only about $3.5 billion. Iraq has been making up the shortfall by burning through its reserves, which some economists say are already insufficient. The International Monetary Fund concluded in December that the country’s economy was expected to have contracted by 11 percent in 2020. It urged Iraq to improve governance and reduce corruption. Protesters set fire to political party buildings and government offices during demonstrations against salary delays in Sulaymaniyah last month.Credit...Fariq Faraj Mahmood/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Image For 18 years oil revenue has propped up a system in which the government wins support by awarding ministries to political factions, which are given almost free rein to create jobs. Iraq’s Civil Service has tripled in size since 2004. Economists estimate more than 40 percent of the work force depends on government salaries and contracts The financial crisis could put the brakes on this corruption-riddled patronage system. “Every government, they’ve managed to buy out more and more but that buying of loyalty, that buying of acquiescence is over,” Mr. Tabaqchali said by phone from London. The high public payroll has left little spending on infrastructure. Iraq’s economy has also been hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with many workers in the already weak private sector losing their jobs. Mr. Tabaqchali and other economists said the devaluation was a difficult but necessary step in helping Iraqi businesses. With the cost of imports rising, Iraqi goods such as farm produce can more easily compete. Adding to the misery has been Iraq’s limited ability to pay Iran for electricity and natural gas. Iraq is not allowed to transfer cash to Iran, but instead it sends food and medicine in exchange for natural gas and electricity. Iran says it is owed the equivalent of more than $5 billion. “Iraq can’t pay all the debt to Iran,” said Abdul Hussein al-Anbaki, an economic adviser to Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. “Iran is also facing an economic crisis and we cannot buy gas without paying.” Amid high temperatures in Baghdad last year, a web of wires drew electricity from private generators to compensate for the country’s unreliable supply.Credit...Sabah Arar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Part of Iraq’s debt was created by its inability to pay, but the lion’s share, about $3 billion, remains frozen in an Iraqi bank, while Iraq struggles to comply with U.S. sanctions against Iran, Iraqi officials said. The sanctions, aimed at forcing Iran to accept stronger restrictions on its nuclear program and to curb its support for foreign militias, have blacklisted its banking system. “For the Iraqis, it is difficult because the mechanism to pay them is almost nonexistent because obviously the Americans are monitoring the situation very closely,” said Farhad Alaaldin, chairman of the Iraq Advisory Council, a policy research institute. Mr. Alaaldin and others said the financial crisis could lead to renewed protests and struggles between armed groups to control Iraq’s increasingly limited resources. That Iraq, one of the world’s largest oil producers, cannot reliably supply electricity to its citizens and has to import electricity is symptomatic of the dysfunction that led to antigovernment protests last year and brought down the previous government. Iraq’s energy infrastructure has suffered from three devastating wars since the 1980s, destroying refineries and power plants. But since the American-led invasion of Iraq overthrew Mr. Hussein in 2003, corruption and incompetence have prevented Iraq’s government from fully restoring electricity. In addition, although Iraq is awash in oil, most of its electricity plants run on natural gas. Iraq has vast natural gas reserves but has not invested heavily in developing its gas industry. And until the Trump administration levied additional sanctions on Iran, importing electricity gas from Iran was the easiest solution. Gas flares at the Nahr Bin Omar Oil Refinery in Basra in 2019.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times For the millions of Iraqis who cannot afford electricity from private generators, the power cuts and rising prices have been a double blow. Haifa Jadu, 55, who had come to Shorja market to buy sesame seeds and walnuts, said she and her husband, a retiree who is blind, had simply done without electricity for large parts of the day. “We used to pay money to a generator owner, but we haven’t bought power for four months because he increased the price,” she said. She said the walnuts she bought a month ago for about $3.50 a pound were now almost $5 and out of reach. The government has proposed sweeping measures to try to bolster the economy, including tax increases, in a plan now before Parliament. But many politicians are counting on the prospect of increased oil prices this year to delay passing what economists say are urgently needed reforms. Until that happens, unemployment is expected to grow as about 700,000 young people enter the job market each year. With few jobs to go around, they are likely to join what has become a permanent underclass of the poor and dispossessed. Near Shorja market, Amar Musa, wearing a black mask and a military-style olive green coat, had set up artificial Christmas trees and tinsel garlands to sell on the busy main street to his Orthodox Christian customers, who celebrate the holiday in January. Mr. Musa, 45, graduated from a technical college with a mechanic’s diploma but says he has never been able to find a job in his field. Standing next to a white Christmas tree with a deflated mylar Santa impaled on its metal branches, he explained he had a shop that went out of business and now drives a taxi. Like many Iraqis, he also writes poetry. Asked to recite one of his poems, he pulled a cigarette out of a package, broke it in half and threw it on the ground. “I am like a cigarette,” he said. “I burn and like a butt I would be thrown away. Do not talk to me about the homeland. We are poor and our homeland is the grave.” Falih Hassan contributed reporting. link :https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/world/middleeast/iraq-economy-debt-oil.html

Russia Iran and Syria always seem to stick together Now that the shittes control Iraq I would think Iraq will be part of that mess Who ever decided to let Iraq have elections with majority rule had to if known who the majority was in Iraq beforehand They knew what they were doing Maybe it is part of a plan to get the Sunnis to fight the shittes http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/world/middleeast/iraq.html?_r=0&referrer= Russian Jets And Experts Sent to Iraq JUNE 29, 2014 BAGHDAD — Iraqi government officials said Sunday that Russian experts had arrived in Iraq to help the army get 12 new Russian warplanes into the fight against Sunni extremists, while the extremists declared their leader the caliph, or absolute ruler, of all jihadi organizations worldwide. The Russian move was at least an implicit rebuke to the United States, which the Iraqis believe has been too slow to supply American F-16s and attack helicopters — although the United States is now in the process of providing both. “In the coming three or four days the aircraft will be in service to support our forces in the fight” against the insurgents of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said Gen. Anwar Hama Ameen, the commander of the Iraqi Air Force, referring to five SU-25 aircraft that were flown into Iraq aboard Russian cargo planes Saturday night, and two more expected later Sunday. Also on Sunday, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria released a 34-minute audio recording of a speech by its official spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, who said that the insurgency’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was now the world’s caliph and as such had declared all other jihadi organizations void and under his direct control, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremists’ online presence. The audio speech was released on an ISIS-linked Twitter feed, the group said. ISIS’ bombastic announcement of its hegemony over the world’s Islamic extremists was little more than a propaganda ploy, but it was indicative of its growing ambitions. ISIS, originally formed from the broken remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq, split with Al Qaeda last year when that group’s leaders ordered it to leave Syria. Since then, ISIS has battled with Qaeda-linked jihadis in Syria, as well as with non-extremist rebel forces there, for control of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Soldiers unloading an SU-25, a ground-attack fighter jet, in Baghdad on Sunday. REUTERS The ISIS announcement also revealed Mr. Baghdadi’s alleged real name — Ibrahim Ibn Awwad Ibn Ibrahim Ali Ibn Muhammad al-Badri al-Hashimi al-Husayni al-Qurashi — and said he would be known as Caliph Ibrahim for short. A caliphate is a Muslim empire that in theory encompasses all Muslims worldwide, and is a term used to describe empires like that of the Ottomans in Turkey in the 15th to 20th centuries, as well as those that did rule much of the civilized world in the early days of Islam. In present-day Baghdad, the Iraqi Air Force commander, General Ameen, said that Russian military experts had arrived to help set up the new SU-25 warplanes, but that they would stay only a short time. The last five Russian aircraft would arrive by Monday, he said. Last week, President Obama ordered 300 American military advisers into the country, and the Iranians have reportedly sent advisers from their Republican Guards’ Quds Force. At least three United States Special Forces teams are said to have been deployed north of Baghdad in recent days, tasked with carrying out a survey of Iraqi forces to determine their condition and needs. This was the first report of Russian military aides in the country, although General Ameen said they were experts, not advisers. American officials, citing intelligence reports, have said that Iran has been sending surveillance drones over Iraq as well as supplying the government with military equipment and support. On Thursday, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said the Iraqis, in an arrangement with the Russian Ministry of Defense, had ordered a dozen SU-25s, a ground-attack fighter jet useful for close air support operations. “They are coming very fast,” General Ameen said in a telephone interview, “because we need them in this conflict against the terrorists as soon as possible.” He said the Russians would leave within around three days after the aircraft were ready for service. The Iraqi military used SU-25 jets extensively during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, but they have not been used in Iraq since 2002 or earlier. Still, General Ameen said they would soon see action again. “We have pilots who have long experience in this plane and of course we have the help of the Russian friends and the experts who came with these aircraft to prepare them,” he said. “This will produce a very strong punishment against the terrorists in the coming days.” Sunni jihadi fighters were reported on Sunday to have stalled a government offensive to retake the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. Insurgents had apparently regained control of key government buildings in the center of Tikrit, according to witnesses who reported seeing the black flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, flying over many important buildings. The day before, Iraqi flags had been hoisted on many of them, as Iraqi troops carried out a ground assault after a three-daylong operation intended to take the city and roll back the insurgents’ advance toward Baghdad. Iraqi forces carried out repeated airstrikes, mostly using helicopters, on insurgent targets throughout the city on Sunday for the fourth day in a row, witnesses said. The Iraqi Army remained in control of roads leading into Tikrit — Saddam Hussein’s birthplace and a longtime stronghold of Sunni hard-liners, about 100 miles north of Baghdad — as well as the campus of Salahuddin University in Tikrit and a military base, Camp Speicher, on the outskirts of the city. The military’s advance, supported by tanks and helicopter gunships, was hampered by a large number of bombs planted along the roads, a common tactic of the insurgents. According to a security official in Tikrit, speaking on the condition of anonymity as a matter of government policy, ISIS fighters had kidnapped six relatives of Maj. Gen. Jumaa al-Jabouri, deputy commander of Iraqi military operations in Salahuddin Province, holding them hostage and destroying their homes in the eastern part of the city. What appeared to be a jumbo Russian transport aircraft, from which the SU-25 warplanes were unloaded, was shown Saturday night on Iraqiya, the state television network, at what was believed to be an air base in Taji, a short distance north of Baghdad. The new aircraft “will increase and support the strength and capability of the Iraqi air forces to eliminate terrorism,” a statement issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said. The Iraqis have sought to buy American F-16s and Apache helicopter gunships. The sale of the Apaches had been delayed by concerns in Congress, which feared Mr. Maliki would use them to suppress his political opponents, but the United States has now agreed to provide them. The first two F-16s are to expected to be delivered in September or October, and the first six Apaches will arrive this fall as part of a lease. But it will take months to train the Apache pilots. The Iraqi Air Force currently has only two propeller-driven Cessna aircraft equipped to fire guided Hellfire missiles, which the Iraqis ran out of last week. Over the past three days, 75 new Hellfires were delivered to Iraq by the American government. The air force also had about 180 helicopters, many of them gunships, but six of those were destroyed in the insurgents’ attack on Mosul, and another 60 were damaged. There have also been unconfirmed reports that Iran was prepared to return some of the Iraqi warplanes that Saddam Hussein flew to Iran in 1991 to escape American destruction. Those included 24 French F1 Mirage fighters and 80 Russian jets.