Tens of Thousands of Iraqis Protest U.S. Plan to Stay Until 2011

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted October 22, 2008.

Amy Goodman: The Iraqi cabinet is examining a controversial draft law that would allow U.S. forces to stay in Iraq for three more years. U.S. military chief Michael Mullen warned Tuesday Iraq could risk "losses of significant consequence" if the deal is not approved quickly. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, also defended the deal Monday, saying it "fully restores Iraq's sovereignty."

But tens of thousands of Iraqis demonstrated against the proposed Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA, on Saturday.

Under the draft agreement, U.S. soldiers would retain immunity from prosecution for all actions committed in combat, and the U.S. would retain all jurisdictions over its nationals' actions, except for actions committed "off-duty" and away from U.S. bases.

Critics have dismissed the provision, because U.S. troops seldom leave their bases in Iraq unless on authorized missions. Iraqi and U.S. negotiators are hoping to finalize the agreement before a UN mandate expires this year.

Patrick Cockburn is the Middle East correspondent for the London Independent. He has covered Iraq for many years. He is just back from Iraq. He's the author of several books. His latest is called Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. He just returned from Iraq. He joins me here in the firehouse studio.

We're also joined by Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi blogger and analyst, consultant to the American Friends Service Committee's Iraq program. He translated a leaked version of the proposed agreement, available on his website, raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com, joining us from Washington.

Let's start with you, Raed Jarrar. What did you translate? What are the main tenets of this agreement?

Raed Jarrar: I actually translated two leaked drafts. The first one was last month. It was just a draft during their negotiations. But two days ago, someone from Baghdad sent me the final draft that was approved by al-Maliki's cabinet and sent to the political council for national reconciliation.

Now, the two drafts are very similar. The only difference is that the new one, the final one, is more politicized. They put a couple of sound bites there to, I think, to pressure the Iraqi parliament to pass it. For example, they ask for a U.S. withdrawal by 2011 in one article. But then there are many other parts of the article that actually cancel that call for a withdrawal, the same way that you described the jurisdictions over soldiers article. In one piece of the article, they give some jurisdictions to the Iraqi side, but then the other parts cancel that part. So I don't think there are a lot of significant differences. We are still in a place where the U.S. is planning permanent bases in Iraq. The U.S. soldiers and contractors are still above the Iraqi laws. And I think the agreement is still widely rejected by the Iraqi public and the Iraqi parliament that has the final say in this case.

AG: And who exactly wrote it?

RJ: The agreement was written by the two executive branches. And I think it's really shameful that after all of these months of negotiations, no one from the Iraqi parliament or the U.S. Congress knows anything about the content. Parliamentarians and Congress members end up relying on organizations like mine to find leaked agreements and translate it to them. So there is like a very exclusive negotiation happening behind closed doors. I think "negotiations" is a big word, actually; it's more the U.S. government putting an agreement and getting their allies in Iraq to bless it. I don't think there are real negotiations happening between two sovereign countries. We shouldn't forget that the U.S. allies in Iraq will say and do whatever the U.S. government asks them to do.

AG: Patrick Cockburn, you're just back from Iraq. There were tens of thousands of people protesting the agreement this weekend. Michael Mullen, the U.S. military chief there, bluntly warned Iraq on Tuesday it risks security "losses of significant consequence" unless it approves the agreement. The deadline is -- UN mandate runs out December 31st.

Patrick Cockburn: Yes, and I think that the protests against it, I mean, in this case, by the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, and the general mood in Iraq, it illustrates, first of all, the occupation was never popular, from day one five years ago, and it's still very unpopular. So it's going to be very difficult to get this through. You can feel the opposition to it mounting in all -- lots of corners. And the people who negotiated it, when I was talking to them in Baghdad, seemed to live in a bit of a Never-Never-Land about how this agreement was going to go down among the broad mass of Iraqis.

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Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

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