Iraqis Fret About What US Troops Leave Behind

(Aug. 19) -- It is one thing for a country to crave sovereignty, and another to get it.

Iraqi government officials today welcomed news that the last U.S. combat brigade had left the country, seeing it as a symbolic milestone in Washington's plans for a full withdrawal by the end of next year. There are now fewer than 56,000 American troops left in Iraq, down from a high of 180,000 in November 2007.

But many Iraqis look at the resurgent wave of terror attacks, persistent sectarian tension and the sclerotic political process plaguing Iraq and worry the seven-plus years of American occupation weren't enough to knit together and nurture a functioning new state.

"It would have been better for the Americans to wait until the Iraqi army and police complete their training and become a truly loyal force," Ali Khalaf, a 30-year-old engineer and house painter, told the South African news operation News24.

A suicide bombing at an army recruitment center in Baghdad on Tuesday, which claimed nearly 60 lives, was just the latest attack to intensify doubts about whether the Iraqi government can protect its citizens while the remaining U.S. forces focus on what the Pentagon has called "stability operations."

"It was after the Americans withdrew from our cities that the attacks began again," Abu Ali, an Interior Ministry official, told News24, in reference to the surge in bombings that followed the June 2009 pullout of American troops from most Iraqi urban areas. "If they withdraw completely, what will happen?"

Iraqi military leaders are worried, too, as evidenced by last week's warning from Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari, the Army chief of staff, that Iraq's forces might not be ready to secure the country on their own for another decade.

Even the imprisoned Tariq Aziz, once a senior deputy to Saddam Hussein and the face of his regime to the outside world, believes the U.S. is pulling out too soon. He recently told the Guardian newspaper that a withdrawal under current conditions would be "leaving Iraq to the wolves."

But the current caretaker government -- five months of post-election negotiations have yet to produce a governing coalition -- expressed confidence that Iraqi leaders are ready to assume responsibility along the timeline worked out with the administration of President George W. Bush.

"I think we have to do the job by ourselves; at the end we should be fully responsible for our security," Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman, told Al-Jazeera. "Although it looks as if we have many threats and challenges for us here in Iraq, at the end we have to balance whether we have to accept foreign troops for a long period or [if] we have to do the job ourselves. We have to choose to do the job by ourselves."

There are also plenty of Iraqis who blame the United States for the bloody civil war, the tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and the devastation that continues to color Iraqis' daily lives despite the U.S. reconstruction and security efforts since the 2003 ousting of Saddam Hussein.

"Let them go. Let them go today rather than tomorrow. We don't want them. We are tired of them," Baghdad resident Amir Sa'doon told the television network Euronews. "Enough of the occupation. Let them go. What did they want from us?"

Perhaps the ambivalence of Lubna, a 24-year-old aspiring doctor in Baghdad who has lost 15 family members to terrorism, best sums up Iraqis' uncertainty and fears as the U.S. presence diminishes.

"It's really hard to care about the troops leaving, though, because life in Baghdad is barely tolerable. Basic things that make for an acceptable quality of life are still missing. There's a severe shortage of electricity and water. There's massive unemployment and corruption," Lubna wrote for the BBC.

"It's hard to predict what life will be like here now that the troops have gone," she added. "They have been here since 2003. Between then and now, there have been so many terrorist attacks which weren't prevented so I don't think it will make much difference whether there is a U.S. presence here or not."