Analysis: US role in Iraq doesn't end just yet

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-01 10:21

Even in the most optimistic of circumstances in which Iraq muddles through its political and ethnic problems - and keeps chipping away at the insurgency - it will still need US support. And the Obama administration has said it wants to build a long-term relationship with a key Arab state in a volatile region.

But if today's relative peace in Iraq unravels within the coming year, Obama will face tough choices, including whether to push back his announced timeline for ending the US combat role in the country by September 2010.

Obama could not reinsert US combat forces in Iraqi cities without Iraqi government permission, under terms of the security deal negotiated by the Bush administration last year. And he could not change the 2011 deadline for removing all US troops from Iraq without renegotiating that deal.

Nor might he want to, even with the prospect of Iraq spinning into a new cycle of sectarian warfare. Obama came into office promising to end US involvement in the war, arguing that Iraq's remaining problems are primarily of a political nature and cannot be solved by continued US military force.

And more recently, Obama announced that his administration was refocusing on what he considers a bigger problem - increasing instability in Afghanistan and a growing insurgency in neighboring Pakistan. In that context, US troop reductions in Iraq are a one-way ticket; once out, they are unlikely to return.

Qubad Talabani, son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the Washington representative of the semiautonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, believes that if security deteriorates in coming months and hot-button political issues are not settled, the 2011 deadline should be renegotiated.

"Regardless of whether things go well or things deteriorate, there is going to be a strong connection between the United States and Iraq," Talabani said in an interview Tuesday. "The nature of that relationship will depend on whether things improve or deteriorate. The US has invested too much in this effort just to walk away."

What would Obama do if Iraq reverted to major violence?

Stephen Biddle, an Iraq watcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a recent analysis that a full-scale civil war could mean a civilian death toll in the range of 600,000 to more than two million.

"Given its role in precipitating the war in Iraq, the United States would bear special responsibility for such a catastrophe," Biddle wrote. He added that if the conflict spread beyond Iraq's borders it would risk a disruption of world oil markets and might derail prospects for successful Israel-Palestinian peace talks.

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