It posted tens of thousands of troops in Iraq, huddled with its leaders and helped craft its laws — but with the country swamped by deadly protests, Washington is staying out of the fray.
Its apparent absence during a key turning point in Iraq lays bare how much its interests and influence have waned since the 2003 US-led invasion that opened the door to fellow Shiite-majority neighbour Iran.
Since protests erupted on October 1, more than 330 people have died, authorities have imposed an internet blackout, and activists have been threatened and kidnapped.
“The (US-Iraq) gulf has never been so big, and keeps getting bigger,” a senior Iraqi official told AFP on condition of anonymity. After the invasion, the US effectively dismantled and rebuilt the Iraqi state, ushering in a new class of political elites with whom it crafted close personal links.
It trained a new military, deploying more than 170,000 troops to Iraq at its peak before withdrawing in 2011.
Since then, American soldiers helped Iraq defeat jihadists and US officials conferred closely with their counterparts on the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum, the 2018 parliamentary vote and the ensuing cabinet formation.
Paul Manafort is working for allies of the leader of Iraq’s Kurdish region to promote a referendum opposed by the US https://t.co/U8KwofxlJq
— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 21, 2017
Now, protesters across Baghdad and the Shiite-majority south are demanding an overhaul of the US-crafted system, but the US has remained comparatively restrained. It has issued a half-dozen statements condemning violence but stopped short of using its diplomatic muscle to resolve the crisis.
In the past, Washington would have been “much more overt,” the top Iraqi official told AFP. “The US back in 2003 shaped this current Iraqi government structure, which delivered this political class,” he said.
“Do they want to be engaged in rectifying it? I think the jury is still out.”
Read more: Anti-Iran narratives surfing Iraq & Lebanon’s protests threaten Iran’s regional influence
Iraq war timeline
March 20, 2003: President Bush announces the start of a war against Iraq. Allied forces begin the campaign with strikes on military targets, including an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein.
April 9, 2003: Saddam Hussein’s rule collapses in a matter of hours as much of Baghdad comes under American control. Across much of the capital, Iraqis take to the streets to topple statues of Mr. Hussein, loot government ministries and interrogation centers, and give a cheering, often tearful welcome to advancing American troops.
This was the scene on TV thirteen years ago, the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. #Iraq pic.twitter.com/CaDTrqfTfX
— Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) April 9, 2016
May 1, 2003: President Bush declares that the military phase of the battle to topple Saddam Hussein’s government is “one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11th, 2001, and still goes on.”
August 19, 2003: A suicide bomber drives a cement mixer full of explosives into the side of the United Nations compound in Baghdad and blows it up, killing 17 people and wounding at least 100 in an attack on one of the principal agencies in charge of rebuilding Iraq.
December 13, 2003: Saddam Hussein, once the all-powerful leader of Iraq, is arrested without a fight by American soldiers who find him crouching in an eight-foot hole at an isolated farm near Tikrit.
Read more: Countering civilisationalism: Lebanese and Iraqi protesters transcend sectarianism
June 28, 2004: Fifteen months after Saddam Hussein’s removal from power, the American authorities transfer formal sovereignty of Iraq to its new leaders in a surprise ceremony called two days ahead of schedule.
November 7, 2004: Between 10,000 and 15,000 American soldiers and Marines backed by newly trained Iraqi forces move on Falluja for what American commanders say is likely to be a brutal, block-by-block battle to retake control and to capture, kill or disperse an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 insurgent fighters.
Since protests erupted on October 1, more than 330 people have died, authorities have imposed an internet blackout, and activists have been threatened and kidnapped.
January 30, 2005: Defying death threats, mortar rounds and suicide bombers, Iraqis turn out in great numbers to vote in the country’s first free elections in 50 years.
December 30, 2006: Saddam Hussein is hanged just before dawn at an execution chamber in Baghdad during the morning call to prayer.
June 10, 2007: American commanders turn to another strategy that they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the past.
"The consequences of the Gulf War—which fueled the rise of Al Qaeda and kicked off America’s Thirty Years War in the Middle East—may, in the long run, have been more disastrous than the younger Bush’s ill-fated decision to 'finish the job' in 2003." https://t.co/7eiBA4dQv7
— Libertarianism.org (@libertarianism) November 17, 2019
November 17, 2008: The Iraqi Parliament ratifies a status of forces agreement with the United States that sets a course for an end to the American military’s role in the war and signals the beginning of a new relationship between the countries. The pact calls for American troops to pull out of most Iraqi cities by the summer of 2009 and sets the end of 2011 as the date by which the last American troops must leave the country.
August 31, 2010: President Obama declares an end to the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq.
October 21, 2011: President Obama said that the last American soldier would leave Iraq by the end of the year, bringing to an end a nearly nine-year military engagement that cost the lives of 4,400 troops and more than $1 trillion, divided the American public, and came to define America’s role in the world.
Read more: Iraq Protests: Tug of War between Iran & US over Dead Bodies
December 5, 2011: United States forces declared a formal end to their operations in Iraq during a ceremony in Baghdad even as violence continued to plague the country.
Fraying friendships
“The bottom line is that the US state-building project in Iraq has failed,” said Kirk Sowell, an analyst who writes the Inside Iraqi Politics newsletter. Since protests erupted on October 1, more than 330 people have died, authorities have imposed an internet blackout, and activists have been threatened and kidnapped.
Last week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo telephoned Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi and “deplored the death toll”, but four protesters were killed the next day. Perhaps most worrying for the US is the role of Major General Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s pointman for Iraq, in brokering deals among political forces in Baghdad.
After the invasion, the US effectively dismantled and rebuilt the Iraqi state, ushering in a new class of political elites with whom it crafted close personal links.
“US influence is not really zero, but it is negligible during the current crisis,” said Sowell. That is partly because Iraq has filled out its own institutions and US troop numbers have drastically dropped, said Robert Ford of the Middle East Institute.
Ford was a diplomat at the sprawling US embassy in Iraq between 2004-2006 and 2008-2010. But the mission now sits mostly empty after an ordered US withdrawal in May, as tensions rose between Tehran and Washington over the former’s nuclear ambitions.
Tonight, @RichardEngel reports on how the US withdrawal from northern Syria has affected Kurdish allies, and the devastating results of this historic shift in American policy.
Watch 'On Assignment: American Betrayal,' tonight at 10 p.m. ET on @MSNBC. pic.twitter.com/3PcG8Hlb4N
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 17, 2019
“That in and of itself shows US interests are reduced,” he told AFP. There is also little shared history between current Iraqi officials and the administration of President Donald Trump, unlike with previous US governments.
“I don’t think President Trump could pick up the phone, talk to Abdel Mahdi and rely on old times together or face-to-face meetings,” said Ford.
Kiss of death
In fact, Iraqi and US officials say ties between the White House and the premier’s office are at their “coldest” since 2003. They say the White House has postponed a bilateral meeting at least three times because it was “angry” Abdel Mahdi was not distancing himself more from Iran.
The mission now sits mostly empty after an ordered US withdrawal in May, as tensions rose between Tehran and Washington over the former’s nuclear ambitions.
But among a political class with deep, decades-old ties to Iran, Abdel Mahdi is “probably the best we could hope for”, a senior State Department official told AFP. Tehran and its Iraqi allies, including armed groups, depict any party seen as close to the US as a “conspirator” seeking instability, making it politically costly to cosy up to Washington.
“Iraqi actors used to want others to know they had access to the US. Now, it’s the kiss of death,” said Ramzy Mardini of the United States Institute of Peace. That logic also applies to the current anti-government demonstrators, which Iran-backed parties have sought to paint as US-backed “agents”.
Read more: US & allies fuelling protests in Iraq, Lebanon, says Iran’s Khamenei
Western officials in Baghdad told AFP they were wary of signaling open support for the protesters because of such claims. Demonstrators have directed their ire at the governing political class but also on perceived Iranian overreach, a dimension Washington has welcomed without explicitly backing the rallies.
Direct criticism of the US, surprisingly, has been rare — even though it was the main architect of the system. That could change if rallies continue to be met with violence.
“The legacy for the younger generation is that it will see the US put out talking points, but not take action,” said Mardini. “It makes it harder for US policymakers to regain the trust of the future political class.”