NSN Conference Call: Winds of Change in Iraq Posted by Adam Blickstein

Today, NSN held a conference call examining the situation in Iraq with Marc Lynch, Professor of International Affairs at George Washington's Elliot School of International Affairs (and of the acclaimed Iraq blog Abu Aardvark) and Colin Kahl, Professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Lynch and Kahl discussed a variety of issues, including the now clear position of the Iraqi government regarding the future of U.S. troops in Iraq. Below are some quotes, and the full audio can be heard here:

Marc Lynch:

So I assume everyone has been following the somewhat of a media frenzy over the whole series of remarks that have been made by Maliki and spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh, and by several other Iraqi officials. And I think that a lot of people are getting a bit too caught up in the details in whether a particular statement was translated correctly or mistranslated. It seems to me that there have been enough, different statements made by enough, different Iraqi officials to make it pretty clear that this is the new position of the Iraqi government. I think that they’ve made these statements in a number of different ways and I think we can have a fair degree of confidence that a new Iraqi bargaining position has emerged. And this is actually pretty surprising because I think that up until a couple weeks ago, I think most of us would have assumed that the Iraqi position would have been more favorable the idea of a long-term unconditional American support for them.

I think that he has also come to a better understanding of what Obama’s position actually is, on his own and through his advisors, and this clearly became something which Iraqis are becoming more comfortable with, which means that, you want a take away message going on, I think we can say that Iraqi politicians see political advantage in aligning with something that does not look like it’s occupation or a new form of mandate. They are willing to walk away from a deal the Bush Administration if they don’t get what they want because they feel comfortable with what they see coming down the line.

Colin Kahl:

So a couple of things have become clear in the past week: there will not be a long-term SOFA, or there’s very unlikely to be a long-term SOFA, Status of Force Agreement; there’s also not likely to be a re-upping or renewal of the UN mandate, which some have suggested, instead, what it looks like is that there will be some memorandum of understanding or other bridge deal that will allow U.S. forces to continue to operate in Iraq, probably under some additional restrictions that they don’t have now, for the next year or two, kicking the can down the road to the next administration to negotiate a long-term agreement. The Iraqis were demanding in that context that there be some time horizon for the departure of U.S. forces and the transition of those forces out of a predominantly combat role into a predominantly support role. But what’s complicated the situation is whether what the Iraqis really want is a time horizon or a timetable, and you’ve seen a number of conflicting statements from the White House and the Iraqi government on this front, but particularly in the last couple of days and weeks you’ve seen comments by Maliki and his official spokesmen which is just that they’re looking for some definitive sense that we’re going to make a transition to a new role and a substantially reduced presence in Iraq, sometime in 2010.