The twelfth chapter of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Volume on the Iraq War is about the 2011 U.S. withdrawal and its impacts upon Iraq. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki continued his concentration of power and was using the security forces to go after his opponents, the Islamic State of Iraq began its comeback while the Americans willingly gave away its influence with Baghdad.
Part of President Barak Obama’s presidential campaign was based upon his opposition to the Iraq War. When he became president he was determined to follow the withdrawal timetable created under the Bush administration.
Planning the pullout of U.S. troops was the Obama White House’s main foreign policy priority. Three timelines were presented for the withdrawal, 16 months, 19 months and 23 months. The U.S. military in Iraq wanted as much time as possible and advocated for 23 months warning that a quick exit would cause problems. The president picked the middle ground with 19 months. Obama also decided that a small force of American soldiers would stay behind but how many troops would be involved became a huge controversy.
The U.S. commander in Iraq General Ray Odierno created the Joint Campaign Plan Assessment Team to analyze the withdrawal. It believed that a civil war was more likely than the return of the insurgency and that had to be stopped at all costs. That proved to be wrong. It also noted that the military wanted a conditions based exit while the White House just wanted out by a set date.
Another issue that arose was that the State Department and U.S. Embassy was not capable of taking up all the duties the military was leaving behind and did not want those responsibilities either. American troops had around 1,000 functions and missions which the Embassy was supposed to take over from 2010-11. State said it would only continue what it considered the most important ones. It turned out it didn’t have the capacity for any of them.
Not only that but the U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill wanted a normal diplomatic relationship with Iraq and rejected taking responsibility for military operations. As a result the Americans stopped attending Iraqi government meetings and dropped some negotiations with Baghdad as well. Hill was motivated by his belief that there was no longer any real security threat in Iraq and it was time for a withdrawal. This caused a huge rift with the military a division that hadn’t been a problem since the Coalition Provisional Authority years at the start of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
As the U.S. was pulling out and backing away from Iraqi politics PM Nouri al-Maliki continued his move towards autocracy. He took over the National Intelligence Service after its director retired by firing 375 officers claiming they were Baathists and replaced them with Dawa loyalists. The premier then used the service to go after his rivals. Maliki also turned the Special Tactics Unit into a death squad to assassinate Sunni politicians and arrested others on corruption charges. The U.S. special operations command believed Maliki’s politicization of the intelligence and security services (ISF) made his government blind to the rebirth of the Islamic State of Iraq.
A perfect example of Maliki’s abuse of power was in April 2009 when Baghdad claimed it captured ISI head Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. It refused to allow the U.S. to see him. Two months later the government admitted it did not capture Baghdadi. In the meantime the person who was accused of being the ISI leader named Sunni politicians and Sahwa commanders as being involved in terrorist attacks. Those accusations led to several arrests again as Maliki wanted to wipe out the Sunni political class.
The Kurds were another target for the prime minister. Defense Chief General Babakir Zebari issued a report to President Jalal Talabani that Maliki wanted to remove the Kurds from the Defense Ministry and take over the ISF using his office of commander in chief. That was supported by Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaimi who said the premier was breaking the constitution in an attempt to seize power.
Maliki was still plotting against Moqtada al-Sadr who had the largest political base in the country. Starting in 2009 militias like Asaib Ahl Al-Haq (AAH) began picking up attacks upon the U.S. as it prepared to withdraw. The Americans encouraged the PM to talk to the group in hopes of encouraging reconciliation. The U.S. agreed to stop targeting AAH and released four of its leaders as a result. The militia in turn agreed to a ceasefire but that only lasted four months after which rocket attacks upon the Green Zone and other operations re-started. The U.S. continued to make concessions to try to help Maliki however releasing deputy AAH head Laith Khazali. The prime minister said he wanted AAH to join politics, disarm and take part in the 2010 elections. His goal was to cut into Sadr’s base since AAH was a breakaway faction. General Odierno hoped the talks would divide the group between those willing to enter politics and those that wanted violence. The Americans would then go after the latter and eliminate them. Instead AAH got more and more of its men released, didn’t join politics and continued its attacks upon the Americans all the way up to their departure date. Maliki had no problem with this because he was still looking to counter Sadr. This would prove to be a strategic error for the Americans as it only empowered one of its enemies.
Prime Minister’s Maliki’s alliance with AAH and other militias was shown in 2011 when Sunni led provinces moved to become autonomous regions to protest Baghdad. On October 27 Salahaddin voted to become a region quickly followed by Diyala, Ninewa and Anbar. In response Maliki sent forces to arrest Diyala’s governor and militias deployed to the provincial capitol Baquba. Maliki’s idea of politics was to use threats, intimidation and force.
On top of all this the Islamic State of Iraq was marking its return. The Anbar Awakening and Sahwa across central Iraq along with the Surge had reduced the insurgency to its lowest level by 2008. In 2009 however things began to move in the other direction. ISI rebuilt its foreign fighter network from Syria into Ninewa province. It re-established bases in towns around Baghdad and revived its car bomb networks inside the capitol. It began targeting Shiite civilians with mass casualty bombings to stoke sectarian tensions which the militants thrived on. After the U.S. withdrawal at the end of 2011 ISI increased its attacks in Mosul and started a bombing campaign in Baghdad. The Maliki government was completely unprepared for this onslaught as it emphasized political loyalty within the ISF rather than competency and was more focused upon politics rather than security. That would eventually lead to the fall of Mosul in 2014.
SOURCES
Rayburn, Colonel Joel, Sobchak, Colonel Frank, Editors, The U.S. Army In The Iraq War Volume 2, Surge And Withdrawal 2007-2011, Strategic Studies institute and U.S. Army War College Press, 2019
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