Iraq’s New Day

Amid celebrations in Iraq on the partial withdrawal of US forces, the case for optimism still gasps for fresh air

It was once Baghdad’s most revered hotel. A stubby six-storied building with views overlooking Abu Nawas Park and the Tigris River, the Baghdad Hotel in its heyday saw the country’s elite mingle with foreign heads of state and famous artists from across the Arab world.

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq by US forces, the hotel was taken over by American contractors and shut off to the public. Massive concrete blast walls were erected at the entrance after a deadly bombing nearby, and the busy arterial road in front of the hotel was constricted to two lanes, causing traffic jams that soon became legendary. The contractors left Baghdad Hotel two years ago, but it couldn’t be reopened. “The contractors still stayed at a nearby building,” as Dawood Khedir, its chairman, explained, “The blast walls remained and we couldn’t open the building for security reasons.”

Now, finally, those blast walls are gone. The hotel has once again thrown its doors open, and hopes to recapture some of that long-lost magic. At its recent reopening, a glittering new chandelier hung from the roof of the lobby, the staff was smartly turned out, and a musician played ‘Strangers in the Night’, among other tunes, in a corner of the hall. A buffet lunch was laid out for visiting guests and dignitaries, including the tourism minister who strutted in later in the afternoon, with a retinue of bodyguards toting Kalashnikovs.

There were a few rough edges—the walls were still being painted in the lobby, the couches re-arranged, and a layer of dust was visible over a fountain that didn’t work—but the management was proud of its efforts. “My happiness is indescribable,” said Khedir, “Over the last two years, we’ve spent all we had to rebuild the place. The Americans left it highly damaged.”

The Baghdad Hotel was inaugurated in 1958 by then Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim—newly inaugurated after a coup that overthrew the monarchy—and was the hotel of choice through Iraq’s recent turbulent history, whether it was Qassim’s overthrow by the Ba’ath Party in 1963, the rise of Saddam, the war with Iran in the 1980s, the first Gulf War, sanctions of the 1990s or the invasion of 2003. In the words of Ibrahim Shnawe, a member of the hotel’s board of directors, “The hotel reflects the history of Iraq.”

That history took another turn this week. After six years of military occupation, on 30 June, as part of a security agreement signed by the US and Iraq last year, all (actually, most) American troops left the country’s urban areas and moved into bases outside them.

Those that do remain have a new role, which is now limited to “train, advise and coordinate with the Iraqi security forces”, according to Brigadier General Steve Lanza, the US military’s spokesperson. In short, US troops will not entirely disappear, but they will no longer be able to conduct independent ‘combat’ operations. Instead, they will now operate alongside Iraqi forces, and Iraqi citizens will be in charge. “We want to be integrated with the Iraqi forces,” adds Lanza, “They have the lead.” American soldiers in some cities will be able to stay in their bases, though, since Iraqis have agreed that these are ‘outside city limits’.

This halfway house arrangement did not stop Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki from seizing the symbolic importance of the troop withdrawal, calling it “a great day for Iraq”. He declared 30 June a national holiday and held celebrations across the country. “It is a message to the world that we are now able to safeguard our security and administer our internal affairs,” announced al-Maliki, of the withdrawal.

Despite the PM’s bluster, facts on the ground are not lost on anyone. American troops remain in Iraq. They are staying because Iraq’s leadership recognises that its security forces are not yet competent enough to operate independently, and neither can they take on the remnants of a multi-faceted, highly complex and well-executed insurgency. Security is still a stiff challenge. Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert with the International Crises Group (ICG), does not think that Iraqi forces are up to the task. “This is a partial withdrawal,” says Hiltermann, “and the real test occurs in 2010 when American forces withdraw.” Next year, all but 30,000 of the 130,000 troops currently in Iraq are scheduled to withdraw, before leaving entirely at the end of 2011.

Though great strides have been made in securing the country over the last year, and violence is at its lowest point since 2003, bombings still take place on a near daily basis. The week leading up to the 30 June deadline was one of the bloodiest in Iraq in months, and saw two deadly bombings—in a town close to Kirkuk in the north, and another in Baghdad—that killed nearly 200 people.

Certain urban areas still have significant insurgent activity. The northern city of Mosul and the province of Diyala, just north of Baghdad, are especially problematic. Hiltermann does not believe violence will abate in these areas. “They will continue to be highly unstable because the US was never strong there to begin with,” in his assessment, “Where they are weak, Iraqi security forces are weak.”

In Baghdad, local reactions to the withdrawal announcement are mixed. Since the famous ‘surge’ of US troops two years ago, there has been a steady decline in sectarian violence that had begun to spiral out of control. In strife-torn neighbourhoods that have stabilised since, people are nervous about the withdrawal. In other enclaves, like Baghdad’s central Karrada neighbourhood, Iraqis want US soldiers to stay off the streets. “Most of the bombings today actually target American troops,” says Abu Qassim, who runs an electronics store.

Undeniably, the withdrawal is as much about Iraqis assuming sovereignty over their country as domestic politics. Incredibly weak to begin with, PM al-Maliki has managed to work his way around a plethora of problems over the past year, helped no doubt by the improved security scenario. With a national election scheduled for January next year, he has six months to show that he can do it on his own, without US support.

Naturally, this also means that al-Maliki has tied his fortunes to this ‘partial withdrawal’ of US troops from Iraq’s cities. Should insurgent groups launch a new campaign of sustained violence, not only will the PM’s sloganeering ring hollow, he might also have to request a return of US troops to quell trouble—which the security agreement has provisions for.

Meanwhile, the relative calm of the past year has led to a renewal in Baghdad’s fortunes. Blast walls are being removed not just from the Baghdad Hotel, but across the city. Erected over the last two years to wall apart Sunni and Shia areas, they are slowly being torn down as a sense of normalcy returns. A major arterial road, the Qadasiya Highway, that had been gobbled up by the so-called Green Zone—the heavily fortified compound where the US Embassy and most Iraqi ministries are located—is now open, and traffic is zipping along. A mall recently opened in Adhamiya. It is modest in size and unpretentious, but the very fact that it’s open and bustling with customers is a hopeful sign. Bars and nightclubs open by the week. Abu Nawas Street, a riverside promenade with a park, now boasts numerous restaurants that serve Mazgoof—the fish of choice in Iraq—and sees families thronging the park on weekends.

However, in contrast to these signs of renewal, underlined by the reduction in violence and ethno-sectarian strife, the persistence of Iraq’s problems can be quite overwhelming. A drop in oil revenues, the consequence of falling oil prices, has left a big hole in the budget. The economy is in shambles, and has almost no private sector to speak of. About 60 per cent of Iraqi workers are employed by the government, while UN statistics put the country’s unemployment at 18 per cent. Additionally, most of Iraq’s educated elite left during the past few years. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, businessmen, anyone with means, fled Iraq’s violence to neighbouring Syria and Jordan. According to the International Organization for Migration, about 2 million of the country’s 29 million residents have escaped abroad, while another 1.9 million are internally displaced. Infrastructure is also in a dire state. Most Iraqis do not get more than a dozen hours of electricity each day. Corruption continues to plague Iraq; according to Transparency International, Iraq was the world’s third most corrupt country last year.

It doesn’t help that Iraqi politics is highly fractious, with sharp schisms along ethnic and sectarian lines, and its democracy immature. It is marked by one row after another. It took six months for al-Maliki to be selected PM in 2005. Most regional governments were not formed for months after provincial elections were held earlier this year. Parliamentarians squabble so much that live broadcasts are frequently stopped to keep Iraqis from acquiring too negative an image of the workings of democracy.

An increasingly assertive—some say autocratic—PM seems to consider it below his dignity to appear before parliament. Most political parties retain their own armed militias and use them to intimidate opponents.

But pandemonious politics pales in comparison with some of the weighty issues that have been neglected. The political will to solve them seems missing. Hiltermann worries most about “the lack of a new national compact, something that all Iraqis can agree to”.

The decentralisation of power; an oil law that shares the country’s only major resource among the various regions; and an autonomy deal for the Kurdish province—are all issues that have yet to be tackled. “As long as the Iraqi parties don’t agree on these things, once the Americans leave—and I don’t mean from the cities, but from Iraq—these groups that are now competing politically, will start fighting each other militarily,” forecasts Hiltermann.

If the fighting begins again, especially along the country’s multiple divides, and if the US isn’t around to enforce democratic rule, then the Baghdad Hotel might again have to shroud itself behind the blast walls that it has tried over six years to get rid of. And what the hotel’s management and Iraq’s PM have described as a new day for Iraq, might be yet another false dawn in this country’s turbulent and tragic history.

Nishant Dahiya works as a producer for National Public Radio’s foreign desk. He divides his time between Washington DC and Baghdad

BaghdadIraqNouri al-MalikiUS