When American troops pulled out of Iraqi cities this month they did not realise quite how final their departure would be. The Iraqi military has since barred them from re-entering areas they previously controlled and all but locked them out of towns and cities.

US convoys can no longer pass through checkpoints in Baghdad without prior approval and an Iraqi escort. American night-time raids in pursuit of insurgents have also been curtailed by Iraqi officials who gained the right to veto all such missions on July 1.

In several cases, the Iraqis took action themselves; in others the suspected insurgents slipped away.

The American military has little choice but to comply with the new rules, leaving many units involuntarily confined to their bases. Asked if American troops were in fact under “house arrest”, Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, failed to deny the assertion, saying wryly: “It is perhaps a measure of our success in Iraq that politics have come to the country.”

An American officer stationed in western Baghdad said that he had to negotiate with Iraqi counterparts every time he wanted to leave his joint security station, a neighbourhood base shared by Iraqis and Americans. “This is not how we thought the withdrawal would go. We thought there would be more sharing of responsibilities,” he said, adding that there had been tension between the Iraqis and Americans living under one roof.

Some of his men were furious, he said, but others saw the restrictions as a sign that they would be going home sooner.

Under the bilateral agreement signed in December, the Iraqi Government has the right to restrict American troop movements inside cities. Although the Iraqis are acting within the letter of the agreement, the Americans had expected more co-operation than they are getting.

Control is shifting quickly on the ground, with Iraqi troops from the Defence and Interior ministries dividing up Baghdad between themselves, regardless of US designs.

Colonel Ali Fadhil, a brigade commander in Baghdad, has noted the displeasure of American units asking for escorts when moving through the city. “They are now more passive than before. I also feel that the American soldiers are frustrated because they used to have many patrols but now they cannot. Now the American soldiers are in prison-like bases as if they were under house arrest.”

In Washington, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sought to play down the tensions: “There clearly are challenges but I think the leadership is working its way through each one of those challenges.”

American troops remain free to move as they please in the Iraqi countryside. On July 11an American soldier shot and killed an Iraqi lorry driver who failed to respond to warnings to stop on a highway north of Baghdad.

But in Baghdad, the focus of the surge that helped to bring Iraq back from anarchy two years ago, US troops play second fiddle. Colonel Fadhil said that an American patrol recently tried to pass through western Baghdad, once a hotbed of insurgent activity and still fairly violent.

“I prevented them and told them they were not allowed unless they had approval, and even if they had approval, Iraqi forces had to accompany them,” he said.

Another time, Colonel Fadhil said a US patrol wanted to leave the walled green zone, which houses the American Embassy, to travel less than a mile to Muthana airbase. They were only allowed to proceed once they had an Iraqi escort.

US night-time raids, long resented by Iraqis, have become even more restricted. When American troops wanted to make an arrest in a Sunni area of western Baghdad based on a tip, the Iraqis forced them to hand over the information and made the arrest themselves.

During a similar situation last week in the neighbouring district of Amiriyah, suspected insurgents escaped after American troops were ordered to pull back and pass the information to their Iraqi counterparts.

Such tensions will be on the agenda today when President Obama meets Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, accompanied by his Foreign, Defence and Interior ministers, in Washington. The White House said that the talks would focus on “the continuing security challenges that we have to be mindful of” and efforts to involve all Iraqi ethnic and religious communities in the political process.

Mr Maliki kicked off his US visit with talks yesterday with Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, focusing on a dispute over multibillion-dollar reparations demanded by Kuwait for the 1990 invasion ordered by Saddam Hussein. Iraq wants the UN to accept that it no longer poses a threat to international security but Kuwait insists that reparations should be paid in full.

Passing the baton

June 28, 2004 The American-led Coalition Provisional Authority hands over power to interim Iraqi Government led by Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister. Handover held two days early to wrong-foot Iraqi insurgents. George W. Bush promises that US troops will stay in Iraq for as long as necessary

January 30, 2005 Iraq holds first elections since fall of Saddam. Despite a series of attacks on polling stations, the elections are hailed by the international community as a success, with a turnout of 58 per cent

June 2009 US forces withdraw from cities and towns, formally giving responsibility for their security to Iraqi forces. The Government declares a public holiday, National Sovereignty Day. Hours before the handover four American troops are killed

Source: Times database

Times Recommends

• Tehran cannot live up to its rhetoric
• The new unicycle that will ‘change the world’
• We cannot wish away Iran’s bomb