Thousands of Iraqis have taken to the street in weekly protests condemning a security agreement that U.S. colonial administrators are trying to impose on Iraq.
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Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has so far vowed to call for the weekly protests until the Iraqi government rejects the security plan. He said that any agreement that allows U.S. military forces to stay in Iraq beyond 2008 is unacceptable.
In November 2007, President Bush and Iraqi puppet Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed a declaration of intent to establish a status of forces agreement, or SOFA. The SOFA deals with military, trade and cultural relations between the occupying forces and the occupied country.
Based on the terms debated in the negotiations, there is no denying that the goal is to further cement Iraq’s colonial status.
Bush said in February that the U.S. did not intend to set up permanent bases in Iraq. Not any more. The U.S. military is now seeking to establish 58 permanent bases in the country—U.S. forces currently operate out of 30 major bases, which do not include smaller posts.Furthermore, U.S. forces want the right to arrest, detain and charge Iraqis without consulting the Iraqi government.
If U.S. negotiators get their way, U.S. military personnel and private contractors will have full immunity; the U.S. military will retain control over Iraqi airspace, including the right to refuel in the air without asking permission; and U.S. official will be able to decide if Iraq is being threatened by another country and respond as they see fit without approval from Iraqi officials. This last provision is clearly aimed at providing the Pentagon with a legal groundwork for attacking Iran, which it routinely — and hypocritically — charges is “meddling” in Iraq.
At the moment, the negotiations over the future of U.S. forces in Iraq are deadlocked. Even those parties that have regularly defended the occupation and been the Pentagon’s staunchest allies were alarmed at the U.S. government’s brazen proposal. A leading member of the Prime Minister al-Maliki’s Dawa party said it would “impair Iraqi sovereignty.” A politician from the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, another pro-occupation party, said, “if it is left to [the U.S. generals], they would ask for immunity even for the American dogs.”
The pro-U.S. parties in Iraq have not suddenly become opponents of the occupation. Rather, they sense that they can stall for the present and strike a better deal with the next U.S. president. Moreover, they feel the intensity of the Iraqi population’s desire for sovereignty. It would be a betrayal of an even higher order to not only work with the occupation, but to sign over the country’s sovereignty indefinitely.
The Bush administration is working very hard to have the agreement completed by July 31. The U.N. Security Council mandate that legitimizes the occupation of Iraq will expire at the end of this year. If the SOFA negotiations fail, the U.N. mandate would expire or have to be extended and the future arrangements of the U.S. presence in Iraq would likely be left to the next president.
The U.S. currently has SOFAs with 80 countries. In South Korea and Germany, the U.S. military has been occupying bases for the last 60 years with no intention of leaving.
Both the Democrats and Republicans consider the Iraq occupation central to their geostrategic goals in the Middle East. They may disagree about military tactics, diplomatic maneuvers, or the pace of troop deployments, but these disagreements are over how to best secure their common aim. One thing is for sure: their inability to decisively crush the Iraqi resistance means that both are for a prolonged occupation.
This makes the work of the anti-war movement as necessary and urgent as ever. The U.S. corporate media can simply make the war disappear when it chooses. For the millions of Iraqis, it is not so easy. It is our duty as activists in this country to expose the outright colonial nature of the occupation and the proposed military agreement, and to intensify our work to bring the troops home now.
