WASHINGTON—In a recent article on the Rudaw news website, Babaker Zebari, General and Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Joint Forces, was quoted saying that the Iraqi army will not be able to protect the country on its own until 2020.
“We do not have the capacity to protect the borders. We also do not have any forces to defend the borders and Iraq’s airspace,” Zebari said.
A week after his interview, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published a report on Iraqi national security after 2011. The report states that according to the Status of Forces Agreement, the U.S. is planning to remove all of its troops by December 2011 unless Iraq asks the U.S. to stay and, if Washington agrees. The report is on the same page as Zebari: Iraq will not be ready to protect its airspace and borders on its own and to do so; it will need the help of another country with a strong military—like the United States.
The question of whether or not U.S. troops should pull out at the end of 2011 remains unanswered. Some people hold the view that the U.S. should pull out while others believe that it’s too soon to do so. While the answer to this question remains a concern, what will happen after the U.S. troops pull out of Iraq is another puzzle that politicians and experts on the Middle East are trying to solve.
In a phone interview, Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy at CATO Institute, a conservative think tank, said that the U.S. should pull out at the end of the year. “It’s the responsibility of the Iraqi government to move forward on their own.”
But how is that possible given the current situation in Iraq? The report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy clearly states that Iraq will not be able to defend itself at the end of the year.
Unless Washington reconsiders the timing, the report states, its withdrawal create potential problems such as decreasing the U.S. influence in Iraq, causing regional uprising and reducing American credibility among regional partners.
Adam Mausner, a research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that it doesn’t matter whether or not the Iraqi government is ready to be on its own. “Clearly Iraq isn’t able to defend itself from its neighbors. However, the withdrawal of U.S. troops doesn’t mean that we would not be able to come to Iraq’s aid in a crisis,” he said.
“The Iraqi air force alone is very small. In a conventional military sense, that’s their biggest shortcoming. On its own, Iraq would have no capability to defend its air space without the U.S. help,” Mausner said.
Once the U.S. troops pull out, Preble said that it’s possible that there will be some violence, especially at the hands of forces loyal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “The political arrangement that has allowed al-Maliki to form a government could break down,” Preble said. “It’s possible that al-Maliki will retain control and use the security forces that are in his control to clamp down violence.”
