Iraqis celebrate US exit, but worry for future

SAMEER N. YACOUB

Asso­ci­ated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) — Even as Iraqis cel­e­brated the depar­ture of the last Amer­i­can troops Sun­day, the dan­gers left behind after nearly nine years of war were on full dis­play. Politi­cians feuded along the country’s poten­tially explo­sive sec­tar­ian lines and the drum­beat of deadly vio­lence went on.

The last U.S. con­voy rum­bled out of Iraq across the bor­der into Kuwait around sun­rise under a shroud of secrecy to pre­vent attacks on the depart­ing troops. When news reached a wak­ing Iraqi pub­lic, there was joy at the end of a pres­ence that many Iraqis resented as a for­eign occupation.

In the north­ern city of Mosul, pas­try shop owner Muhan­nad Adnan said he had a swell of orders for cakes — up to 110 from the usual 70 or so a day — as fam­i­lies threw par­ties at home. Some asked him to ice the cakes with inscrip­tions of “con­grat­u­la­tions for the end of occu­pa­tion,” he said.

But the hap­pi­ness was shot through with wor­ries over the future.

“Nobody here wants occu­pa­tion. This with­drawal marks a new stage in Iraq’s his­tory,” said Karim al-Rubaie, a Shi­ite shopowner in the south­ern city of Basra. But, he said, “the politi­cians who are run­ning this coun­try are just a group of thieves.”

“These politi­cians will lead the coun­try into sedi­tion and civil war. Iraq now is like a weak prey among neigh­bor­ing beasts.”

In the morn­ing, a bomb hid­den under a pile of trash exploded on a street of spare car parts stores in a mainly Shi­ite dis­trict of east­ern Bagh­dad, killing two peo­ple and wound­ing four oth­ers. It was the lat­est in the near daily shoot­ings and bomb­ings — low-level but still deadly — that con­tinue to bleed the coun­try and that many fear will increase with the Amer­i­cans gone.

Vio­lence is far lower than it was at the worst of the Iraq War, in 2006 and 2007, when Sunni insur­gents and Shi­ite mili­tias preyed on Iraqis around the coun­try in a vicious sec­tar­ian con­flict that nearly turned into com­plete civil war. But those armed groups still remain, and there are deep con­cerns whether Iraqi secu­rity forces are capa­ble of keep­ing them in check with­out the help of U.S. troops.

Iraq’s mil­i­tary chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari said Sun­day that his troops were up to the task of uproot­ing mil­i­tant groups.

“There are only scat­tered ter­ror­ists hid­ing here and there and we are seek­ing intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion to elim­i­nate them,” Zebari said. “We are con­fi­dent that there will be no danger.”

Equally wor­ry­ing, the resent­ments and bit­ter­ness between the Shi­ite major­ity and Sunni minor­ity in this coun­try of 31 mil­lion remain unhealed. The fear is that with­out the hand of Amer­i­can forces, the frag­ile attempts to get the two sides to work together could col­lapse and even turn to greater violence.

In an esca­la­tion of the rivalry, the main Sunni-backed polit­i­cal bloc on Sun­day announced it was boy­cotting par­lia­ment to protest what they called Shi­ite Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al-Maliki’s attempts to monop­o­lize gov­ern­ment posi­tions — par­tic­u­larly those over­see­ing the pow­er­ful secu­rity forces. The bloc has com­plained of secu­rity forces’ recent arrests of Sun­nis that it says are “unjustified.”

The Iraqiya bloc warned that it could take the fur­ther step of pulling its seven min­is­ters out of al-Maliki’s coali­tion government.

“We are against the con­cen­tra­tion of secu­rity pow­ers in the hands of one per­son, that is the prime min­is­ter,” said Sunni law­maker Hamid al-Mutlaq, a mem­ber of the bloc.

In par­tic­u­lar, the bloc was angered by the arrest of sev­eral body­guards of Sunni Vice Pres­i­dent Tareq al-Hashimi sev­eral days ago on sus­pi­cion of involve­ment in ter­ror­ist acts. On Sun­day, a senior secu­rity offi­cial said that judges inves­ti­gat­ing the body­guards banned al-Hashimi from trav­el­ing out­side of Iraq — a step that is likely to fur­ther anger the Iraqiya bloc, to which al-Hashimi belongs. The secu­rity offi­cial spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because he was not autho­rized to talk to the press.

Sun­nis have long feared dom­i­na­tion by the country’s Shi­ites, who vaulted to power after the 2003 fall of Sad­dam Hus­sein at the hands of the Amer­i­cans. The rivalry was exac­er­bated by the years of sec­tar­ian killing.

The Iraqiya bloc nar­rowly won the most seats in last year’s par­lia­men­tary elec­tion. But its leader Ayad Allawi was unable to become prime min­is­ter, out­ma­neu­vered by al-Maliki, who kept the premier’s post after cob­bling together key sup­port from Shi­ite parties.

That has left al-Maliki beholden to Shi­ite fac­tions, includ­ing those led by rad­i­cal cleric Muq­tada al-Sadr, whose mili­ti­a­men were blamed for sec­tar­ian killings dur­ing the worst of Iraq’s vio­lence. Since form­ing his new gov­ern­ment, al-Maliki has effec­tively con­trolled the Inte­rior and Defense Min­istries, which over­see the police and mil­i­tary, while con­flicts between Sunni and Shi­ite politi­cians have delayed the appoint­ment of per­ma­nent ministers.

Many on both sides of the sec­tar­ian divide also worry that neigh­bor­ing Shiite-led pow­er­house Iran will now increase its influ­ence in their coun­try. Al-Maliki’s party and other Shi­ite blocs have close ties to Tehran. But even some in the Shi­ite pub­lic resent the idea of Iran­ian domination.

“I am afraid that this occu­pa­tion will be replaced by indi­rect occu­pa­tion by some neigh­bor­ing coun­tries,” said Ali Rahim, a 40-year-old Shi­ite who works for the Elec­tric­ity Ministry.

Omar Waadalla You­nis, a senior at Mosul Uni­ver­sity, said at first he was happy to hear the last Amer­i­cans were gone and thought the city gov­ern­ment should hold cel­e­bra­tions in the streets. Then he thought of the pos­si­ble threat from Iran.

“Now that the Amer­i­cans have left, Iraq is more vul­ner­a­ble than before.”

Posted by AP News on Dec 18 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.