Maliki Leads in Iraqi Election: Voters See Party as 'Most Expedient Way to End the Occupation'

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted February 3, 2009.

RR: But still, I think it's important to say that we need to keep pushing on this, too, because although the Status of Forces Agreement is in place, much of it hasn't been enacted up to the point that it's supposed to be at this point. Bucca is supposed to be empty now, by the terms of the agreement, and there's still --

AG: Explain what Bucca is.

RR: Bucca is the largest U.S. prison inside Iraq. It's supposed to be empty now, and everyone is supposed to be in the Iraqi system, but it still has around 8,000-10,000 people in it.

The Iraqi government is supposed to be approving every single raid and action, military action, that the U.S. does now. That's not really the case. The military just picks up a couple Iraqi soldiers to ride around with them, and that passes for approval. And certainly, the Special Forces raids that continue to go on don't have any approval by anyone discernible.

So, I mean, although it's promising what has been agreed to on paper, there's going to be pressure back against Obama in the opposite direction. There's going to be military people who say we need to stay there and maintain stability. And so, we need to -- people need to, both in Iraq and here, give some push back in the other direction to help support him to make the decision that needs to be made, which is to continue with this --

AG: And the military contractors? I mean, Barack Obama has not said he would ban them, although the Iraqi government said that they wouldn't give a new contract to Blackwater.

RR: Absolutely. That's an incredibly key point, yes. The Iraqi government is way ahead of Obama on this issue. They've withdrawn Blackwater's license to operate in the country, and they've removed contractor immunity. So even if Obama wants to keep them in, I mean, you know, a government now that … has to appeal to the popular nationalism that demands national sovereignty and demands that these contractors be kept in check, I mean, that needs to be supported by actions here in the U.S., too.

AG: What about Iran, Rick Rowley? This is the thirtieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, 1979, 2009. What about its power in Iraq?

RR: Well, Iraqis say -- I mean, many, especially Sunnis -- most of the Sunnis who we interview, the people in the Awakening, the people in the Islamic party, say that there were two occupations of Iraq that happened at the same time: an Iranian and an American occupation. And it was true that ISCI, the Islamist party that the U.S., in one way or another, put in power in the country, was formed in Iran. And the Badr Brigades, which formed the core of the security services in 1994, were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. So these parties, which were identified clearly by Iraqis with both the American occupation and with Iranian foreign influence, they're there seeing a loss in power now.

Iran is always going to be very powerful inside Iraq. They're neighbors. They're incredibly close and linked culturally, religiously. But there has been a massive backlash and a reaction in Iraq against what they see as foreign meddling, both from the United States and from Iran.

AG: You are both just back from Iraq. You are headed to Afghanistan, Rick, in the next few months. The level of violence we've seen both in Pakistan, with these attacks with the U.S. behind them, the unmanned drones, and Afghanistan?

RR: Yeah. Well, the thing that I think is important is that -- I mean, there's been lots of talk about taking the lessons from Iraq and applying them to Afghanistan. And there's huge problems with that, especially because the lessons that people are getting from Iraq are, I think, the wrong lessons.

People look at the surge, are talking about surging into Afghanistan, copying the surge that worked in Iraq. But, you know, just a cursory examination of the facts shows that the surge wasn't what changed the course of the war in Iraq; it was the Awakening, it was these tribes in Anbar that began to see -- well, that were scared by a sectarian war that happened and began to see the Americans as less dangerous to them than the Iraqi government, which they saw as an instrument of Iran. So they were, very specifically, by the sectarian violence, forced into an alliance with the Americans. That's not going to happen in Afghanistan.

AG: Well, that does it for our show, and I want to thank you both for being with us. David Enders and Rick Rowley have been our guests. They are both just back from Iraq.

See more stories tagged with: iran, iraq, sadr city, barack obama, blackwater, surge, kurds, baghdad, mosul, fallujah, awakening councils, nouri al-maliki, dawa, iraq occupations, iraqi elections, kut, diwaniyah, amara, muthana, nasiriyah, sheikh aifan, rick rowley, david enders, bucca

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

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