Eli Lake has a must-read in the most recent edition of The New Republic. In it, he takes a closer look at the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) ratified last month by the Iraqi Parliament which calls for the withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2011. Lake concludes that there is enough in the agreement to keep U.S. troops in Iraq well past said date:
For all the talk of withdrawal and timetables, however, nothing like that is likely to happen. It is true that, as a result of the successful surge that the Democrats and some Republicans opposed, tens of thousands of American troops will begin to exit Iraq in the next three years. But American and Iraqi military and diplomatic officials insist that a residual U.S. force of considerable size is likely to remain for the medium to long term, as will the U.S. bases in Iraq that Democrats over the last two years have insisted must not be permanent.
Lake relied on a memo written last month by retired General Barry McCaffrey which estimated a residual American force of 20,000 to 40,000 troops based on the assumption that the Iraqis will ask the U.S. to stay past 2011. Here's the key reason why (bold is mine):
McCaffrey's reasoning rests in part on his view of the Iraqi military, an institution he says has vastly improved yet still needs mentoring, equipment, and support from Americans on the ground. In his report, McCaffrey writes that Iraq's border-control service is "anemic" and that the army cannot currently conduct military operations without U.S. support and equipment. "The confidence of the Iraqi combat force is still dependant on US mentoring and backup," he writes. "Their officers are very explicit on this point--THE IRAQI SECURITY FORCES DO NOT WANT THE U.S. COMABT [sic] UNITS TO LEAVE--YET." The capital letters are McCaffrey's.
Backing up McCaffrey's assessment is the fact that Iraq's military has requested everything from U.S. surveillance equipment to F-16 fighter jets. With U.S hardware also comes U.S. training. "It is extremely important that the Iraqis have made it clear they want to purchase Western military systems and particularly American military systems," Fred Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who helped craft the surge strategy in 2006, says. Such purchases, Kagan explains, "impl[y] an expectation of a certain kind of relationship with the supplier. There are upgrades and replacements over time. When you have people training your soldiers on how to use the equipment, how to upgrade it, how to work it into their doctrine, who are those trainers going to be? It is a below-the-line statement of alignment."
Alliances change. But as of now, the Iraqi Army and critical parts of the Iraqi government authorizing the above mentioned purchases expect to be aligned with the United States in the long term.
Another interesting note is that the SOFA allows for individual regions of Iraq to have a strong say in the negotiation of long-term military base leases with the United States - something many expect the Kurds and Sunni Arabs to do, regardless of whether Baghdad objects.
Of course, the most important thing about the SOFA is that the United States will no longer be in Iraq under the auspicies of a post-invasion U.N. Security Council resolution, but through a negotiated agreement with the Iraqi government (emphasis added):
What the SOFA does do, however, is establish the political legitimacy of American troops in Iraq for the next three years and provides a framework beyond that. It is perhaps for this reason that the remnants of Moqtada Al Sadr's organization have protested the agreement, as have more and more of the hard-line clerics in Iran. And it is for the same reason that the antiwar crowd is worried: The SOFA clearly ends any legitimate claim that America's presence in Iraq is an occupation at all. From the looks of it, the end of the war and the beginning of a long-term friendship look very much the same.
Iraqi (especially Shia) public opinion might be hostile to the U.S. remaining in their country past 2011, but the Kurds and the Iraqi Army will want the U.S. to remain. It is quite possible that the U.S. is in the early stages of a long-term alliance much like the ones it has with Germany and Japan. At the very least, in a couple of weeks the U.N. resolution will expire and the SOFA will kick in. On January 1, 2009, the occupation of Iraq will be over.