Photo: Jerzy Strzeleck

By Tim Arango
New York Times
February 7, 2012


Officials in Baghdad and Washington said that Ambassador James F. Jeffrey and other senior State Department officials were reconsidering the size and scope of the embassy, where the staff has swelled to nearly 16,000 people, mostly contractors.

The expansive diplomatic operation and the $750 million embassy building, the largest of its kind in the world, were billed as necessary to nurture a postwar Iraq on its shaky path to democracy and establish normal relations between two countries linked by blood and mutual suspicion. But the Americans have been frustrated by what they see as Iraqi obstructionism and are now largely confined to the embassy because of security concerns, unable to interact enough with ordinary Iraqis to justify the $6 billion annual price tag.

The swift realization among some top officials that the diplomatic buildup may have been ill advised represents a remarkable pivot for the State Department, in that officials spent more than a year planning the expansion and that many of the thousands of additional personnel have only recently arrived.

Michael W. McClellan, the embassy spokesman, said in a statement, “Over the last year and continuing this year the Department of State and the Embassy in Baghdad have been considering ways to appropriately reduce the size of the U.S. mission in Iraq, primarily by decreasing the number of contractors needed to support the embassy’s operations.”

Mr. McClellan said the number of diplomats — currently about 2,000 — was also “subject to adjustment as appropriate.”

To make the cuts, he said the embassy was “hiring Iraqi staff and sourcing more goods and services to the local economy.”

After the American troops departed in December, life became more difficult for the thousands of diplomats and contractors left behind. Convoys of food that had been escorted by the United States military from Kuwait were delayed at border crossings as Iraqis demanded documentation that the Americans were unaccustomed to providing.

Within days, the salad bar at the embassy dining hall ran low. Sometimes there was no sugar or Splenda for coffee. On chicken-wing night, wings were rationed at six per person. Over the holidays, housing units were stocked with Meals Ready to Eat, the prepared food for soldiers in the field.

At every turn, the Americans say, the Iraqi government has interfered with the activities of the diplomatic mission, one they grant that the Iraqis never asked for or agreed upon. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s office — and sometimes even the prime minister himself — now must approve visas for all Americans, resulting in lengthy delays. American diplomats have had trouble setting up meetings with Iraqi officials.

For their part, the Iraqis say they are simply enforcing their laws and protecting their sovereignty in the absence of a working agreement with the Americans on the embassy.

“The main issue between Iraqis and the U.S. Embassy is that we have not seen, and do not know anything about, an agreement between the Iraqi government and the U.S.,” said Nahida al-Dayni, a lawmaker and member of Iraqiya, a largely Sunni bloc in Parliament.

Expressing a common sentiment among Iraqis, she added: “The U.S. had something on their mind when they made it so big. Perhaps they want to run the Middle East from Iraq, and their embassy will be a base for them here.”

Those suspicions have been reinforced by two murky episodes, one involving four armed Americans on the streets of Baghdad that Iraqi officials believe were Central Intelligence Agency operatives and another when an American helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing because of an unspecified mechanical failure on the outskirts of the capital on the banks of the Tigris River.

“The aircraft that broke down raised many questions about the role of Americans here,” said Ammar al-Hakim, the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a leading Shiite political party and social organization. “So what is the relationship? We’re still waiting for more information.”

The current configuration of the embassy, a 104-acre campus with adobe-colored buildings, is actually smaller than the original plans that were drawn up at a time when officials believed that a residual American military presence would remain in Iraq beyond 2011. For instance, officials once planned for a 700-person consulate in the northern city of Mosul, but it was scrapped for budgetary reasons.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari met with Mr. Jeffrey last week to discuss, among other things, the size of the American presence here. “The problem is with the contractors, with the security arrangements,” Mr. Zebari said. Mr. Jeffrey will leave the task of whittling down the embassy to his successor, as officials said he is expected to step down in the coming weeks.

“We always knew that what they were planning to do didn’t make sense,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “It’s increasingly becoming clear that they are horribly overstaffed given what they are able to accomplish.”

Mr. Pollack described as unrealistic the State Department’s belief that it could handle many of the tasks previously performed by the military, such as monitoring security in northern areas disputed by Arabs and Kurds, where checkpoints are jointly manned by Iraqi and Kurdish security forces, and visiting projects overseen by the United States Agency for International Development.

Americans are also still being shot at regularly in Iraq. At the Kirkuk airport, an Office of Security Cooperation, which handles weapons sales to the Iraqis and where a number of diplomats work, is frequently attacked by rockets fired by, officials believe, members of Men of the Army of Al Naqshbandi Order, a Sunni insurgent group.

American officials believed that Iraqi officials would be far more cooperative than they have been in smoothing the transition from a military operation to a diplomatic mission led by American civilians. The expansion has exacted a toll on Iraqi ministries, which are keen to exert their sovereignty after nearly nine years of war and occupation, and aggravated long-running tensions between the two countries.

The size of the embassy staff is even more remarkable when compared with those of other countries. Turkey, for instance, which is Iraq’s largest trading partner and wields more economic influence here than the United States, employs roughly 55 people at its embassy, and the number of actual diplomats is in the single digits.

“It’s really been an overload for us, for the Foreign Ministry,” Mr. Zebari said of the American mission.

The problems with the supply convoys, as well as a wide crackdown on security contractors that included detentions and the confiscation of documents, computers and weapons, prompted the embassy to post a notice on its Web site warning Americans working here that “the government of Iraq is strictly enforcingimmigration and customs procedures, to include visas and stamps for entry and exit, vehicle registration, and authorizations for weapons, convoys, logistics and other matters.”

The considerations to reduce the number of embassy personnel, American officials here said, reflect a belief that a quieter and humbler diplomatic presence could actually result in greater leverage over Iraqi affairs, particularly in mediating a political crisis that flared just as the troops were leaving. Having fewer burly, bearded and tattooed security men — who are currently the face of America to many Iraqis and evoke memories of abuses like the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad square in 2007 by private contractors — could help build trust with Iraqis, these officials believe.

“Iraqis, as individuals, have had bad experiences with these security firms,” said Latif Rashid, a senior adviser to President Jalal Talabani.

One State Department program that is likely to be scrutinized is an ambitious program to train the Iraqi police, which is costing about $500 million this year — far less than the nearly $1 billion that the embassy originally intended to spend. The program has generated considerable skepticism within the State Department — one of the officials interviewed predicted that the program could be scrapped later this year — because of the high cost of the support staff, the inability of police advisers to leave their bases because of the volatile security situation and a lack of support by the Iraqi government.

In an interview late last year with the American Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a senior official at the Interior Ministry said the United States should use the money it planned to spend on the police program “for something that can benefit the people of the United States.” The official, Adnan al-Asadi, predicted the Iraqis would receive “very little benefit” from the program.

Reducing the size of the embassy might have the added benefit of quieting the anti-Americanism of those who violently opposed the military occupation.

Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has steadfastly railed against American influence here and whose militia fought the American military, has recently told his followers that the United States has failed to “disarm.”

Mr. Sadr recently posted a statement on his Web site that read, “I ask the competent authorities in Iraq to open an embassy in Washington, equivalent to the size of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, in order to maintain the prestige of Iraq.”

By Ian Cobain

On the evening of 11 April 2003, a pair of RAF CH47 Chinook helicopters swept over Iraq's western desert towards a remote rendezvous point beside Route 10, the highway that begins life on the outskirts of Baghdad before running for mile after mile towards the border with Jordan.

As they approached their destination, the crews assumed they were on an operation that would be uneventful. Two days earlier Saddam Hussein's statue had been toppled after American tanks rolled into the Iraqi capital; three weeks later George Bush would stand in front of a banner saying "mission accomplished".

The helicopter crews had been told that a number of detainees were under armed guard at the side of the highway. They were to pick them up after dark and take them to a prison camp. What followed was far from routine: before the night was out, one man had died on board one of the helicopters, allegedly beaten to death by RAF personnel.

The incident was immediately shrouded in secrecy. When the Guardian heard about it and began to ask questions, the Ministry of Defenceresponded with an extraordinary degree of obstruction and obfuscation, evading questions not just for days but for weeks and months. The RAF's own police examined the death in an investigation codenamed Operation Raker, but this ended with some of the most salient facts remaining deeply buried. The alleged culprits faced no charges.

Asked where the men were being taken, the MoD had initially indicated that they were en route to a prisoner of war camp, one inspected regularly by the Red Cross.

Later it became clear that this was not correct: they were being transported to an altogether more secret location. The truth about the mission raises some searching questions about the legality of some of the British forces' operations carried out in close co-operation with US allies.

One of the first hints that something untoward had happened aboard one of the RAF Chinooks came six years later when Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Mercer was giving evidence at the public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa, the hotel receptionist tortured to death by British troops in September that year.

Mercer, who had been the British army's most senior lawyer in Iraq, told the inquiry that by the time of Mousa's death, several other people had died in UK military custody.

Asked about these mysterious deaths, the Ministry of Defence named one of the deceased as Tanik Mahmud, and said he had "sustained a fatal injury" while travelling aboard an RAF Chinook. Perplexingly, the ministry added that the cause of his death remained unknown.

Asked how they could be sure he had suffered a fatal injury when the cause of his death was not known, the MoD took five weeks to answer.

Eventually, officials admitted that the RAF had received a complaint – anonymously, they said – that "three RAF Regiment personnel on board the helicopter had kicked, punched or otherwise assaulted Mr Mahmud leading to unlawful killing".

This raised many other questions, which the MoD appeared sometimes reluctant to answer.

One of the few that it answered promptly – within hours – concerned the location to which the prisoners were being taken. They were going to Umm Qasr, the MoD said: this was the town on the Kuwaiti border where British and American forces had constructed a large prisoner-of-war camp, a place that came under the supervision of military lawyers and was inspected regularly by the Red Cross.

More information about the incident was to be found in a number of documents released in Australia under that country's freedom of information laws.

The deceased had been one of 64 men detained at a roadblock set up by a soldiers of the Australian SAS. Working alongside a solitary member of a US airforce unit, the 20 Australians were attempting to capture so-called "high-value targets", former high-ranking members of the deposed regime attempting to flee the country.

Seven days earlier, Saddam had appeared suddenly in the middle of a crowd of cheering supporters, an event that was filmed and broadcast on Iraqi TV, along with a speech he was said to have made in which he exhorted his countrymen to "fight them brothers, hit them day and night". The coalition forces were determined to find him.

Three of the prisoners at the side of the highway were suspected of being officials of Saddam's ruling Ba'ath party. Four were held because they were Iranians and in possession of an enormous sum of cash – more than $600,000 – and a letter offering a bounty for each American killed.

The remainder of the prisoners appear to have fallen under suspicion because they were travelling together on a coach. Some were Iraqis and others were Syrian, and all were to be interrogated about Saddam.

None of the 64 were armed, however, and none were in uniform. A number were middle-aged and at least one was severely disabled. Despite this, the men were to be detained as EPWs, enemy prisoners of war. They were to be loaded into the Chinooks in groups of eight and ferried to the prison camp.

As a result of what might be described as a legal sleight of hand, the men were never recorded as prisoners of the 20 Australians. On paper, at least, the lone American was said to have captured them. This meant that the Australian government could consider itself not to be bound by a Geneva convention clause that obliged it to demand the return of any prisoner it transferred to the US if it became apparent that US forces were not treating them in accordance with the convention.

At this point in the Guardian's inquiries, a report written by the squadron leader commanding the 2nd squadron of the RAF Regiment was leaked.

This document, prepared as part of a brief US field inquiry into the incident, showed that the Australians had bound the prisoners' thumbs together before handing them over.

The RAF Regiment gunners then placed hessian bags over the prisoners' heads as they were being led aboard the Chinooks, despite a ban on hooding imposed on the UK's armed forces more than four decades earlier.

Each prisoner was forced to lie face down on the floor of the aircraft, and those who "refused to adopt the required position" were forced to the floor and knelt upon.

One man who slipped out of his thumb restraint and flailed his arms around was said to have been "lowered" to the floor and "subdued".

By the time the helicopters had reached their destination, two of the prisoners "were found to be unresponsive", according to the squadron leader, while "there was some commotion at the front of the aircraft" because a third prisoner, a disabled man, had somehow parted company with both his prosthetic legs.

It was a windy night, the sand was being whipped up by the Chinooks' rotor blades, and visibility was down to 1.5 metres. The American troops who received the prisoners say the British appeared to be rushing, anxious to transport them all before dawn.

The two "unresponsive" men were loaded into the back of a Humvee vehicle, face down and on top of each other, while the man with no legs was placed in the front passenger seat.

All three were driven to a "holding facility", where one was declared dead. The bag had been taped so securely over his head that it needed to be cut off.

The US inquiry concluded that "appropriate" methods had been used to subdue the man who died. The RAF made no attempt to contact next of kin to inform them of his death, however. Were it not for the anonymous complaint, this would have been the end of the matter.

The complaint is understood to have been made by a member of the Chinook's crew, unhappy at what he saw happening in the helicopter's cabin as they were flying to the camp. After receiving the complaint, the RAF police moved slowly.

According to the MoD, they waited more than a year after the death before asking an RAF pathologist whether the body should be exhumed and examined. Asked to explain the delay, the MoD said the investigators "did not know Mr Mahmud's place of burial".

Once the location was disclosed by the US military, officials explained, "discussions took place on the feasibility of accessing Mr Mahmud's remains, taking into account serious security concerns and obtaining permission from the local imam". At this point, according to the MoD, the RAF pathologist "indicated that given the climate and the degree of decomposition since the death, it would be extremely difficult to establish cause of death". As a result, no postmortem examination was ever carried out.

This advice surprises one eminent civilian pathologist, who says that only exhumation could reveal the state of decomposition.

Derrick Pounder, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Dundee, who has experience of exhumations and postmortem examinations in the Middle East – including cases of deaths in custody – said: "That advice would be contrary to the advice that any UK forensic scientist would offer to any police in the UK who were investigating an allegation of assault leading to death."

He says an examination of the hard tissue may have revealed evidence of an assault before the prisoner died: ribs, for example, sometimes fracture in a distinctive manner when kicked. Asked whether a copy of the pathologist's advice would be made available, the MoD said no copy could be found in its files. After this advice was received the case was passed to RAF's prosecutors, who advised that there was insufficient evidence to bring any charges. They also concluded that any further investigation was pointless.

Asked why the men had been taken as EPWs, when none were armed and all were wearing civilian clothes, the MoD appeared to be stumped.

"UK forces did not detain these individuals, they transported them," the ministry said. "This is not a question we can answer. This question should be directed to the detaining country."

Eventually, the Guardian obtained a copy of the passport that had been in the dead man's pocket, and the death certificate that had been issued by the US military authorities. The passport showed the dead man was a Baghdad odd-job man aged 36. It also showed that his name was not Tanik Mahmud, but Tariq Sabri al-Fahdawi. The RAF police investigation appeared to have been so superficial that it had failed to establish the dead man's identity.

The certificate recorded Sabri's cause of death as unknown. It also showed that the whereabouts of his grave, far from being uncertain, could be pinpointed precisely. The American officer who completed the certificate had gone to considerable lengths to ensure it could be found, beyond the airfield perimeter: "700m out front gate to first culvert, 191 degrees for 50m, next to grave with stacked stones in same location ..."

But of greater significance was what the death certificate revealed about the location of the airfield. It showed that the 64 prisoners had not been flown to the prison camp at Umm Qasr at all. They had been taken an airfield codenamed H1, described on the certificate as the forward operating base of a US special forces unit known as Task Force-20. H1 was an airfield built next to an oil pipeline pumping station.

It was 350 miles north-west of Umm Qasr, in the middle of Iraq's western desert, a vast and desolate expanse of sand and scree. The nearest settlement was many miles away: it is difficult to see how there could have been a "local imam" whose permission needed to be sought before exhumation, or how anyone in the vicinity who could pose "serious security concerns".

The holding facility at H1 was not inspected by the Red Cross. Moreover, its existence was not disclosed to Lieutenant Colonel Mercer, the UK's most senior army lawyer in Iraq at the time. Mercer says he was "extremely surprised" to learn of its existence.

He said: "This matter potentially raises very serious questions. Strenuous efforts were made at all times to ensure that all prisoners were accorded the full protection of the Geneva conventions and vigorous objections would have been raised if there was the slightest possibility of a breach of the conventions. It appears from the information disclosed that some prisoner operations were being conducted, deliberately or otherwise, outside of the chain of command."

The holding facility appears effectively to have been a secret prison – a so-called black site. It is entirely possible, according to international law experts, that taking prisoners to H1 could amount to "unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement", and that the prisoners were subjected to "enforced disappearances", both of which are war crimes under the Rome statute of the international criminal court.

One former RAF Regiment trooper who was based at H1 for several months has described being involved in a number of similar missions in which prisoners were collected from coalition special forces. This always happened "under total darkness", he says. On arrival at H1, the prisoners were handed on to people whom he describes as "other authorities".

Could this explain why the police investigation into the alleged killing of Tariq Sabri ended with some of the most basic facts – such as his name and the the cause of his death – remaining unknown?

According one well-placed source with knowledge of Operation Raker, the RAF police investigation into the death, there were some at the MoD who were concerned about the possible consequences of a more thorough inquiry: people who were filled with dread at the thought that it could lead to accusations that British forces and others had been involved in crimes against humanity.

When the MoD realised that the location to which the prisoners were flown was known to the Guardian, it quickly apologised for previously stating that they had been flown to Umm Qasr. This had been an innocent mistake, one that a spokesman said could be attributed to "admin/human error".

At this point the MoD also released a copy of the US field inquiry report, which had been withheld from the Guardian for more than a year.

The report showed that a British special forces unit known as Task Force 14, and an Australian unit known as Task Force 64 were an integral part of operations at H1. Both units were under US tactical control.

The ministry also volunteered an admission that the investigation into Sabri's death was not conducted quickly enough. But it said that this could not happen today as its procedures had changed, and added that Operation Raker was now the subject of a review by a team of military police and former civilian detectives known as IHAT – the Iraq historic allegations team.

Asked whether there was any truth in the suggestion that officials had interfered with the investigation into Sabri's death in order to suppress information about the UK's involvement with H1, the MoD replied that IHAT was "giving consideration to any involvement with the investigation of MoD officials who were external to it", and that it would be "inappropriate to comment" while that review was continuing.

The MoD was also asked whether it was satisfied that UK forces serving at H1 had never been in breach of the Geneva convention, or any other international humanitarian law. It replied by stating only that IHAT would consider the actions of those who came into contact with Sabri.

Nor would the MoD comment on another claim made by the source with knowledge of Operation Raker: that both CIA and MI6 officers were involved in the interrogation of prisoners flown secretly to H1, and that these were the "other authorities" whom RAF Regiment troopers were told would be taking possession of their prisoners. The ministry's only response to questions about non-military interrogators at H1 was a terse: "No further information."

The involvement of the CIA in Task Force 20 is no secret in the US, where it has been disclosed in Pentagon statements and congressional testimony. According to Human Rights Watch, the inter-agency unit was responsible for "some of the most serious allegations of detainee abuse" following the invasion.

Before the end of that year, the unit merged with a similar unit previously based in Afghanistan and changed its name to Task Force 121. By then, however, some at the Pentagon were sufficiently concerned about its methods to send a special investigator to Iraq. Stuart Herrington, a retired military intelligence colonel, discovered that the unit was holding undeclared "ghost" detainees and operating a secret interrogation centre to conceal its activities. Some of its prisoners showed signs of having been beaten.

This was several months before the abuses at Abu Ghraib became known, and Herrington's top-secret report shocked some in Washington. Eventually, somebody leaked it.

Over the years that followed, the unit changed its name again, to Task Force 6-26, and later to Task Force 145, possibly in an attempt to confuse adversaries. Its precise size and the names of its commanders have never been disclosed. But its methods appear to have remained the same. The American Civil Liberties Union obtained a series of US defence documents that showed that the unit's personnel had been investigated repeatedly over their alleged involvement in a catalogue of abuses. In one case, taskforce interrogators were said to have forced a 73-year-old woman to crawl around a room while a man sat on her back, before forcing a broom handle into her anus. Two of her fingers were broken. The woman, a retired teacher, said her interrogators demanded to know the whereabouts of her son and husband, both of whom she said were dead.

In 2006, an investigation by the New York Times found that some taskforce prisoners had been water-boarded, and others were beaten or shot with paintball guns. While a number of interrogators had been prosecuted, posters around one of their bases proclaimed "no blood, no foul": they would be safe as long as none of their subjects bled. The ultimate destination for some of the prisoners who passed though this base was said to be Abu Ghraib. The newspaper's investigation did not uncover the continuing UK involvement with the taskforce, however.

But this became clear when one British member spoke out after quitting the army in disgust. Ben Griffin, a young SAS trooper, said the unit was capturing hundreds of people who were being rendered to prisons where they faced torture, and that he had witnessed dozens of illegal acts by US troops. "My commanding officer at the time expressed his concern to the whole squadron that we were becoming the secret police of Baghdad," Griffin said. The MoD responded by obtaining a court injunction to silence Griffin, and warned he faced jail if he said any more.

The review of Operation Raker being conducted by IHAT is nearing completion, and a report is expected to be handed to the head of the RAF police at the end of this month. The MoD says it is not going to be published.

By Angus McDowall and Parisa Hafezi

Reuters

December 21, 2011

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah told U.S. diplomats that by toppling the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the United States had presented Iraq to Iran "on a golden platter."

That assessment, recorded in a 2005 embassy cable released by WikiLeaks, was affirmed in the eyes of Saudi Arabia's Sunni Muslim rulers by the outbreak of sectarian squabbling that followed this week's departure of the last American troops from Iraq after almost nine years of occupation.

The decision by the Shi'ite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to seek the arrest of his Sunni vice president on terrorism charges has pushed Iraq's fragile coalition to the verge of collapse, raising the specter of renewed civil war - with alarming implications for all its Neighbors.

"The Saudi government is worried about the departure of American troops because now Iranian influence can become direct instead of indirect. There is nothing now to balance Iranian rule, so things might get worse," one Saudi official said.

The chaos that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion and toppling of Saddam turned Iraq into a regional bear pit, where Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and Turkey backed different sides in a messy struggle that pitted Shi'ites against Sunnis and Arabs against Kurds.

For its part, Iraq's Shi'ite-led government fears that the uprising in neighboring Syria may unhinge its own delicate sectarian balance, no longer protected by an American military presence.

Iraq's Shi'ite leaders say they fear that a collapse of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's ruling establishment, dominated by members of the Alawite Shi'ite sect and allied with Iran, may usher in a hardline Sunni government on its doorstep, risking a spillover of violence into Iraq and encouraging Iraqi Sunni militants.

"Nature abhors a vacuum, and the relative power vacuum in Baghdad is going to draw in the Neighbors," said Stephen Biddle at the U.S.-based Council of Foreign Relations.

HIGH STAKES

Iran arguably now has more to lose from renewed fighting than the other regional heavyweights, particularly in light of the spiraling bloodshed in Syria, an ally that allowed Tehran to extend its influence as far as the Mediterranean.

Tehran's clerical rulers were widely seen to have come out as the biggest winners after the fall of Saddam, with the emergence of their old ally Maliki and his Dawa party as the strongest political force in Iraq.

However, despite the risk that renewed unrest might alter this favorable political equation, Iran pushed for U.S. troops to withdraw, regarding their presence on its western flank as a constant threat.

"The U.S. withdrawal has created a power vacuum in Iraq, provoking Iran and Saudi Arabia to fill it in order to increase their influence in the region," said Iranian analyst Gholamhossein Mirvarzi.

"By increasing its influence in Iraq, Iran aims to challenge the regional Sunni rivals, particularly after (potentially) losing its close ally in Syria," he added.

Iranian officials say they want a calm and stable Iraq and are not seeking a Shi'ite monopoly on power.

But as international sanctions have started to bite into the Iranian economy, inflating the prices of imported goods in Tehran's warren-like bazaar, the rising tensions with Saudi Arabia have deepened its political isolation.

Meanwhile, feuding between factions loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become increasingly open.

"Considering Iran's domestic problems and the developments in Syria, Iran will not be able to play a central security role in Iraq after the U.S. withdrawal," said Iranian analyst Hossein Farshchian.

SECTARIAN DIVIDE

Across the Gulf, Saudi Arabia has long seen Iraq as the fulcrum of a sectarian divide that could stir unrest among its own Shi'ite minority, concentrated in its oil-producing Eastern Province.

In recent months, those concerns seemed to become more urgent, as the Arab Spring inspired a revolt among the Shi'ite majority in Bahrain, whose Sunni ruling family is one of Saudi Arabia's closest allies.

Small protests erupted among Saudi Shi'ites, and persisted throughout the year. Riyadh accusing an unnamed foreign power of instigating violence, hinting that Iran was to blame.

These tensions go some way towards explaining why King Abdullah, whose mother's Shammar tribe includes thousands of Sunni Iraqis, has kept the Shi'ite Maliki at arm's length.

In 2008, Saudi intelligence chief Prince Muqrin told American diplomats that Abdullah viewed the Iraqi prime minister as untrustworthy and "Iranian 100 percent," according to a cable released by WikiLeaks.

In recent weeks, some Iraqi officials have seen a foreign hand behind the push for more autonomy by mainly Sunni provinces bordering Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan.

Yet for all that, the influence of Saudi Arabia, which has still not reopened the Baghdad embassy that it closed when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1991, remains limited.

"What can be worse than what has already happened? The Americans leaving will affect Iran more than Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia does not have a heavy presence in Iraq," said Jamal Khashoggi, a former Saudi newspaper editor with ties to the royal family.

"It had its friends there, but it kept its distance."

By Justin Elliott

Salon

December 17, 2011

Al Jazeera

December 15, 2011

US defence chief Leon Panetta has officially ended the US's military presence in Iraq by saying that "the dream of an independent and sovereign Iraq is now a reality" at a ceremony at the US military headquarters in Baghdad.

Thursday's flag-casing ceremony in the Iraqi capital came ahead of the final withdrawal of all US troops from the country by the end of the year, prompting celebrations for many Iraqis but also uncertainty regarding the stability of the country.

Nearly nine years after the start of the controversial invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and sparked years of violence, Panetta told Iraqis "Your children will have a better future", and said the US and Iraq would have "a new relationship rooted in mutual interest and mutual respect".

"We are not about turn our backs on all that has been sacrificed and accomplished in Iraq," Panetta said.

"Iraq will be tested in the days ahead by terrorism, by those who would seek to divide, by economic and social issues ... by the demands of democracy itself," he said, while adding that the US would be a "committed friend and ... partner" to the country.

'Source of inspiration'

General Lloyd Austin, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said that the country would be "a source of stability and inspiration in the region".

Panetta and Austin were joined at the ceremony by US Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey and US Central Command chief General James Mattis.

Iraq was represented by military Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Babaker Zebari and Defence Ministry Spokesman Major-General Mohammed al-Askari.

Al-Askari told Al Jazeera that the departure of the American forces will help hasten Iraq's progress. 

"We have to depend on ourselves. Iraq is a big country, with its people and history, and cannot rely on another country to protect it. We are not afraid of this, our capabilities are growing rapidly, and we have the ability to protect Iraq," he said.

There are currently about 4,000 US troops still in Iraq, operating out of two bases in the city of Diwaniya and in Dhi Qar. That number is down from 170,000 at the height of the war.

A small contingent of troops remain in Baghdad, but will pull out following Thursday's ceremony.

While US President Barack Obama lauded the achievements of some of the last US troops to return home on Wednesday, residents of Baghdad were jubilant that the soldiers were leaving.

"I'm very happy because the occupier is leaving the nation ... the country will be ruled by its sons who will maintain it and keep its sovereignty," Salah al-Asadi, a tribal leader, told Al Jazeera.

"It's a joy for all Iraqis, not only for me. The US withdrawal from Iraq is something very big for us ... because the country’s security will be in the hands of our brothers at the police and the army, they are from us," said Abdelaziz Adel, a public servant.

'Situation unstable'

Qassim Abdullah, another Iraqi citizen, said: "If the Americans have achieved anything, they have achieved it to their own benefit in the first place. They are the ones who get benefits from this issue. As for Iraqis, maybe they have the change they have been waiting for, but they paid high price for it as you can see the killings, devastation and sectarian violence. And up to now the situation is still unstable." 

While US troops are pulling out, Washington is ramping up its diplomatic presence in Iraq, Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf reported from Baghdad.

"The US presence here will shift to a diplomatic, political and very much an economic one. To do that, they're keeping a huge embassy. It will be the biggest US embassy in the world ... between 15,000 and 16,000 people," she said.

There are concerns among regular Iraqis that the US will leave behind a country that is politically unstable, Al Jazeera's Omar al-Saleh reported from Baghdad's central Tahrir Square.

Obama paid tribute on Wednesday to about 3,000 soldiers gathered at the Fort Bragg military station in North Carolina on Wednesday, saying he was proud to welcome them home after what he called an "extraordinary achievement".

"Over the last few months, the final work of leaving Iraq has been done. Dozens of bases ... that house American troops have been closed down or turned over to the Iraqis," the president said, adding that troops would leave the country "with their heads held high".

IRIN

December 5, 2011

While overall violence is decreasing in Iraq, the level of attacks and intimidation of religious minorities remains high, leading to increased displacement, a new report says.

"There's a feeling that Iraq is slowly moving towards increased stability, but minorities are feeling that they are excluded from public life and that the new Iraq is not for them," said Chris Chapman, head of the conflict prevention programme at Minority Rights Group International, the London-based advocacy and research organization, which wrote the report. "They feel they are getting a message that Iraq is not their country and they are not welcome... It's for Sunnis, Shi'as, Kurds, but not for them."

The report said "in some cases [the displacement is] decimating communities to the point that they risk disappearing altogether from their ancient homeland".

At the peak of the insurgency against US troops who invaded Iraq in 2003, attacks against minorities were well-documented.

But those attacks continue, even now that overall violence has subsided. The most fatal were the suicide attacks against a Baghdad church in October 2010 that left 56 dead and led more than 1,000 families to flee Baghdad over two months. But there have been many other incidents, amounting to targeted violence, threats, and intimidation that the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)'s 2011 report describes as "systematic, ongoing and egregious".

While violence in 2011 is slightly lower than in 2010, Chapman said, there have been several attacks on churches; an attack on a Turkmen political party; repeated attacks on members of the Shabak, Yezidi and Mandaean minorities, including kidnappings and murders, according to local NGOs; and continued targeting of shops providing goods or services deemed un-Islamic, including liquor stores owned by Christians and Yezidis, according to USCIRF.

"Attacks against minorities have had a profound effect by targeting their communities' social infrastructure, leaving victims and others fearful to carry on with their everyday lives," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its 2011 report on Iraq. Many minorities say they feel the goal of these attacks is to force them out of Iraq altogether.

Those minorities who subscribe to a religion other than Shi’a or Sunni Islam represent 3-5 percent of the Iraqi population but make up 10 percent of the internally displaced, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), and between 17-22 percent of its refugees, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

"There is no doubt that minorities in Iraq are living in extremely bad conditions," Hanin Al-Qado, who heads Iraq's Minorities Council NGO, told IRIN. "They are awaiting a dark and uncertain future and they are concerned about that."

Diverse population

Unlike many other populations in the region, Iraq is diverse in terms of ethnicity and religion. In addition to the largest Muslim groups of Shi'a and Sunni Arabs and Kurds, Iraq has communities of Armenians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Assyrians, Circassians, Baha'is, Black Iraqis, Roma, Faili Kurds, Kaka'i, Sabean, Mandaeans, Shabaks, Turkmen, Yazidis, Jews and Palestinians.

Al-Qado, a prominent leader of the Shabaks, said about 1,200 members of his community had been killed since 2003. The USCIRF report said at least half of the pre-2003 Iraqi Christian community is believed to have left the country, "with Christian leaders warning that the consequence of this flight may be the end of Christianity in Iraq". Mandaeans have reported to USCIRF that almost 90 percent of their community has either fled Iraq or been killed.

Ali Al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, denied that minorities were being singled out in Iraq, saying one of his government's priorities was to make sure that they are safe and practise their religions.

"Terrorist attacks are not only targeting minorities but all Iraqis. Terrorists do not differentiate between minorities and other Iraqis," Al-Moussawi said. "The government gives a priority to protecting the minorities and their rights more than other segments of the Iraqi people," he added.

"We are proud of the minorities in Iraq and we can't abandon them as we consider them proof of coexistence among Iraqi people, their civilization and the diversity in their society."

But rights groups say attacks on minorities are rarely investigated or punished, creating a "climate of impunity".

Marginalization

Fawzia Al-Attia, professor of sociology at the University of Baghdad, said political and ethnic wrangling since 2003 was behind the discrimination and marginalizing of minorities of Iraq.

"This problem did not exist in the past but after 2003, the political, religious and ethnic affiliations - as opposed to citizenship - have become main pillars in forming the government," Al-Attia said.

"And that has led to competition and conflict, not only against minorities or among big sects but even among the same sects," she added. "Politicizing the tribe or the sect has become a culture in our society to get these gains."

"But part of it is simply that the conflict allowed tensions to blow up into all-out conflict between religious groupings. That has created divides which were kind of there before but had not been allowed to flare up to that extent."

Access to public services

According to the MRG report, minorities in Iraq also face difficulty and discrimination in accessing employment, education and healthcare.

"There is discrimination, prejudice and marginalization," Christian lawmaker Younadim Kanna said.

This is especially the case in areas disputed by the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government - where many minorities live - because neither side sees it as in their interest to invest in services there, the MRG said.

Al-Qado said minorities are "suffering a lot" in these areas and stressed that government should control these areas and protect minorities in them.

Minorities' access to basic services has also been affected by conflict in the area. A July 2011 attack on a Shabak village by a tribe from the Kurdistan region left around 12,000 people without water and the authorities had not addressed the issue, MRG said.

Sabean-Mandaean and Faili Kurds complained that they could not access education in their language in parts of the country, the report added.

Women minority members are vulnerable to physical and verbal harassment and often hide their identity outside their homes.

The 40-page report, Iraq's Minorities: Participation in Public Life, is based on 331 interviews with members of 11 minority communities in Iraq's northern self-ruled Kurdish region and six provinces in 2010.

Fewer than half of respondents said they felt safe visiting places of worship; 87 percent said school curricula did not portray minorities in a positive light or at all; and 38 percent had experienced discrimination in accessing government jobs.

Recommendations

The MRG report recommended that a number of legal and policy changes be made by involving all minority groups in the drafting of an anti-discrimination law.

It also recommended introducing a new national identity card that did not indicate ethnicity or religion and eliminating the requirement that Arabic be the only language used in all employment, and providing bilingual education for minorities in areas where they form a significant proportion of the population.

"Many members of minorities in Iraq find themselves effectively in ghettos as they are excluded from whole areas of public life. Greater dialogue, reconciliation and the development of a comprehensive legal framework must be ongoing to have a real impact," the MRG's Chapman said.