Watch Out

The main concern of both Maliki and President Barack Obama is not that Al-Qaeda terrorists will regain the footholds they have lost in Iraq; the greater threat is that sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi’ites or between Arabs and Kurds may plunge the country into a civil war from which America can never extricate itself.

The most optimistic person in Iraq last week may have been Shaimaa Aqeel, 21, who sat at a mosque in the Shi’ite suburb of Sadr City insisting that “everything will be okay” once the Americans have gone.

“They claimed to protect us but in fact they bombed us,” she said. “All the political strife will end once the Americans have gone. Sunni and Shi’ite politicians will work together.”

In Baghdad, Abu Adel, a shopkeeper, had reason to take a contrasting view. Last Monday he lost his 20-year-old son in a bombing in Baghdad’s central Karrada district. His neighbour, Hussein Kamal, tried to comfort him, but both men believe the future is full of foreboding.

“If such things can happen while the Americans are still here, God alone will save us after they have withdrawn,” said Kamal. “These attacks reflect disputes between our politicians and parties. Iraqis are always the victims.”

A key test will come in Falluja, the Sunni-dominated city that was once a notorious insurgent hotbed but has since been rendered comparatively secure. Last week Abu Muhammad, a commander of the Jaish al-Mujahideen resistance, said a call had gone out to insurgent factions to return to the city.

“Military attacks will continue and increase against the coalition forces and other forces allied to it,” Abu Muhammad pledged.

“Falluja was the launchpad of the resistance in Iraq. We now await the retreat of the Americans into their fixed, fortified bases, where we feel they will be trapped like rats in glass cages.”

In deference to Maliki, and to avoid complaints that the withdrawal is merely a polite fiction to bolster the Iraqi government, US forces have agreed to suspend virtually all military operations for at least the first few days of July in order to persuade Iraqis that a genuine change has occurred.

“The Americans will be “invisible for the people”, said one of Maliki’s supporters. “They will turn into genies.”

In practice, the Americans will still be close at hand, supplying “advisers” and “trainers” to urban Iraqi units. US military helicopters will continue to fly unrestricted sorties. No significant reduction in the present 131,000 US troops is planned before next year.

Al-Dhari, the sheikh from the Association of Muslim Scholars, is among numerous opposition Iraqis who have condemned the withdrawal arrangements as a sham. “What is the point if the enemy leaves your house only to move next door, where he can still monitor your movements and behaves as if he continues to live with you?” al-Dhari asked.

Yet for the Pentagon and the Obama administration as a whole, the arrangement could prove a valuable test of the Iraqi government’s stability and the much criticised competence of its security forces.

The question that no American has yet answered is: what happens if the withdrawal experiment fails?

In Falluja last week there were hints that police and other officials will simply run away if violence breaks out. “I needed the wages so I joined the police,” said one policeman who gave his name as Ammar. “But my brothers were killed by American fire, and I’ve pledged to both my mother and my wife that I will not fight.”

There have been other reports of low morale, inefficiency, indiscipline and corruption among government forces. Most commanders are seen as loyal to the Shi’ite-led government. Sunni groups have been largely excluded from the security forces.

Yet independent US analysts are not yet ready to “press the panic button”, as Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution put it last week. Pollack, a former CIA and National Security Council analyst, described the withdrawal as “a very important trial balloon in determining where Iraq is headed”.

He believes the continuing presence of US advisers — with plenty of firepower in emergency reserve — may bolster Iraqi forces and reduce the risk of serious violence.

Anthony Cordesman, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, recently returned from Iraq, where he found the local security forces “making real progress”. But Cordesman agreed the main challenge remained “ethnic and sectarian tensions”.

If Iraq collapses into civil war, Obama could face a nightmare. The president has so far proved “flexible and responsible” in his approach to troop withdrawals, Pollack said. But most of his advisers “have no interest in Iraq and really want it to go away”.

Abu Teba, a 44-year-old builder from the Yarmouk district of Baghdad, is among those who fear the worst. “How will Iraqi forces handle our security when they are on their own?” he asked, after yet another bomb had wrought havoc in Baghdad last week.

“There is so much violence while the Americans are still here.”

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• 'Was it real?' The US bailout nightmare
• Iranian opposition plays the long game