Sami Ramadani : Sofa so disastrous
Sami Ramadani
guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 November 2008 15.00 GMT
Encircled by US tanks and marines, stationed in and around the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq's "sovereign" parliament has approved two military, economic, cultural, and diplomatic pacts with the US. The one that has captured the headlines is the status of forces agreement (Sofa). The much more important pact, the strategic framework agreement (SFA), was slipped through almost unnoticed. A copy of it was not available even to the US congress.
A sizable minority in parliament, led by the popular Sadrist block, now 29 members after the assassination of a leading member last month, and 6 of the recalcitrant members of the government factions, attended the parliamentary session and voted against.
The pacts went through amid chaotic scenes, by 144 against 35 votes. 19 walked out before the vote and more than 70 didn't show up. The pacts were nodded through after days of murky behind-the-scenes bargaining between the corrupt leaders of the pro-US sectarian factions within the government.
To understand how freely these pacts have been negotiated and approved one has to imagine Iraqi tanks, led by prime minister Maliki, occupying the lawns at the White House and surrounding Congress while dictating Iraqi terms to Bush and co. The scene outside would include the total destruction of America's infrastructure, over 10 million Americans killed within five years, one million prisoners, 50 million refugees within and outside the US, mainly in Mexico and Canada, the assassination of thousands of the US's best scientists, doctors and academics, and the collapse of the health, education and clean water services. After the Iraqi government sows sectarian and ethnic divisions in the country, which al-Qaida terrorists further exploit, giant concrete walls are built to create partitioned ghettos for Irish Cathoics, Protestants, Mormons, born-again Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mexicans, supporters the KKK, and of course communists, for their own protection of course.
My guess is that the 29 Sadrists, holding placards and chanting anti-occupation slogans inside parliament, represented the sentiments of most of the Iraqi people, who were not even shown a copy of the pacts before parliament approved them.
The SFA confirms that the US now has a government in Baghdad which will do its bidding. And here I strongly disagree with my friend Jonathan Steele's assessment in yesterday's Guardian that the Sofa terms "spell the complete defeat of the neoconservative plan to turn Iraq into a pro-western ally and a platform from which to project US power across the Middle East."
The SFA is an open-ended pact, which ties Iraq to the US militarily, economically, culturally and diplomatically. No more, no less. And in case one is pleasantly surprised by the sentence in the Sofa stating that all US forces would withdraw by end of December 2011, reality takes a firm hold in an another sentence, this time in the all-embracing SFA pact, stating that the US would not seek or request a "permanent" military presence or bases in Iraq. It is the word "permanent" which lets the cat out of the bag. How long is non-permanent one wonders? More than half a century, as in Korea? Or 100 years as John MaCain mused?
Jonathan also hails a clause in the Sofa regarding prisoners:
… no Iraqi can be arrested by US forces except with permission from Iraqi authorities, and every Iraqi who is arrested in these circumstances must be handed to Iraqi forces within 24 hours
Any joy over this must be tempered by the fact that torture, Abu-Ghraib style and more, is widely practiced in democratic Iraqi prisons, and many prisoners are killed after summary trials. The underlying assumption, that Jonathan appears to make, is that the Iraqi government is independent. The truth is that "the Iraqi authorities" have become dependent allies of the US forces in their marauding, murdering activities in Iraq.
The Iraqi government made much of the clause that US soldiers would come under Iraqi jurisdiction. The caveats are such that this is rendered meaningless. For a US soldier or civilian to be arrested by Iraqi authorities, before they are handed over to the US forces "after 24 hours," they have to be both "off duty" and have committed "grave" crimes outside US facilities and bases. How many off duty US soldiers, one might ask, would venture into the streets of Baghdad, let alone those of Najaf or Fallujah?
If one considers that the SFA allows the US to "defend" Iraq in case its security is threatened by others, the celebrated clause that the US would not use Iraq to attack other countries becomes ridiculous when one considers that the US attacked and occupied Iraq itself illegally and by trumpeting a big lie. What would stop them concocting another big lie to attack Iran or Syria? Certainly not Sofa or SFA.
I am sure that Jonathan would agree with me that two of the five "preamble" clauses of the SFA are nothing short of what the neocons, whom he declares to have been totally defeated in Iraq, have been aiming for Iraq:
4. Recognising both countries' desire to establish a long-term relationship …
5. Reaffirming that such a long-term relationship in economic, diplomatic, cultural and security fields will contribute to the strengthening and development of democracy in Iraq …
Stripping them of their warm words, that was exactly what the neocons were after: "long-term" domination of Iraq in all fields.
Considering that the SOFA is supposed to cover the three years up to the full withdrawal of the US forces, it is important to note that the open-ended SFA has one "principle" that opens the door for renewing Sofa after the 3-year deadline for withdrawal:
3. The temporary presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is at the request and invitation of the sovereign Government of Iraq
A pro-US, corrupt regime in Baghdad, that is hated by its own people, will obligingly "request" and "invite" the occupiers to stay. That is if the people haven't toppled it by then.
Nothing in the pacts contradict what Obama has said on Iraq. In my article in the Guardian on Obama, before his election, I argued that Obama wanted to keep US bases in Iraq and some "residual forces." I stand by my analysis there.
It is obvious, when one reads the tens of SFA clauses relating to the military, security, cultural, economic, energy, health, environmental, information technology and judicial spheres, that the US is going to impose on Iraq a series of "agreements" during its "legitimised" occupation of the country in the next three years. They will start with the infamous hydrocarbon law to totally control Iraq's oil resources.
Another important point that has also escaped the notice of Iraq analysts is that Sofa not only legitimises the occupation for another three years, it also frees the US occupation from the UN. Without Sofa, the UN security council would have been asked by US and Iraq to renew the mandate of the US-led forces in Iraq for another year. Though the UN has been less than feeble with regards to the occupation of Iraq, the US will no longer be open to pressure from Russia, China, Europe or any other member of the council. This is important if one considers the rising tensions between the US on the one hand and Russia and China on the other. Differences over Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are also likely to rise between the US, Germany and France. The British government, of course, is likely to remain a poodle.
While it is true to note, as Jonathan does, that the formidable Iraqi opposition and resistance to the US-led forces has inflicted heavy defeats on US neocons' projects in Iraq and elsewhere, it is certainly premature to say that the size of the defeat is such that the US occupation will come to an end in accordance with the Sofa.
My assessment is that that US strategy in Iraq is still being pursued, and is blessed by president-elect Obama. It is a strategy to:
• Strengthen and secure a pro-US government in Baghdad.
• Support such a government by all means possible, including using US combat forces and keeping massive military bases.
• Strengthen the Iraqi armed forces to do the US bidding and replace the US forces in fighting against anti-occupation resistance. This is a strategy similar to Vietnamisation, but it will be pushed forward under the banner of fighting al-Qaida terrorism, which is detested and rejected by the Iraqi people. To further reduce its own casualties, the US will rely heavily on aerial bombardment and Apache helicopter gunships.
• Secure lucrative economic contracts, particularly after forcing the oil law on Iraq. Exercising control over Middle Eastern oil remains a key US objective.
• Use Iraq to back US strategy in the Middle East: escalate the war in Afghnistan/Pakistan, strengthen Israel, weaken Iran, Syria, the Palestinians and the powerful resistance in Lebanon.
One achievement of the Iraqi resistance was to force the US neocons to shelve plans to attack Iran, immediately after stabilising Iraq's occupation, and to force them to freeze further "shock and awe" wars against the region's peoples. While an attack on Iran should not be entirely discounted during Obama's time in office, Iran's cooperation over Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine will be the price it has to pay to avoid being attacked.
Given the current balance of forces, only a unified Iraqi people, in alliance with other peoples of the Middle East, and supported by the American and British public, could fully dislodge the US-led occupation from Iraq. That, alas, will take more than three years to achieve.
