By Ferry Biedermann
Financial Times, 02 February 2006
It's raining in Iraq and as the desert bases of the US army turn to mud, the thoughts of the men and women serving there turn to home.
The talk among the commanders is of an expected drawing down of the troop strength, which stands at about 150,000.
There is a sense that with the final lap of the political handover completed with December's election and, even more importantly, with the forthcoming US congressional elections in November, a substantial part of the army is on its way home - for good.
One staff major in a combat unit, who is about to head home after completing his second tour in Iraq, is pretty certain he will not have to come back. "By 2007, when we are up for the next rotation, we will not be here any more, at least not as extensively," he says.
One of his colleagues has a darker view: "Yeah, or we'll be back by then with even more men to restore order because the country went to hell after a withdrawal in 2006."
Many of the commanders on the ground feel that they are achieving something, by gaining the trust of the local population and by working closely with the new Iraqi army and the police force.
Some say that given one or two more years of the same kind of effort, the Iraqi security forces will be able to stand on their own feet.
But some of the more thoughtful and more senior officers usually admit, after some reflection, that it is overly optimistic to think the US can change patterns that have been established over centuries.
The expressions of doubt come as the army and the whole of the US operationin Iraq has come undercriticism from unexpected quarters.
A poll in the Military Times last month showed that, within the military, support for the way thewar is being waged is crumbling.
Then, British army Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster criticised the US forces, saying they showed little sensitivity to the cultural make-up of Iraq and that junior officers painted too bright a picture of the situation to their superiors.
Much of the criticism, both of the military and of other aspects of the US involvement in Iraq, is aimed at a perceived lack of American understanding of the complexity of the situation.
In Baghdad a senior western diplomat says this is because most Americans in Iraq maintain an often inevitable distance from the local population, cooped up in their large Green Zone administrative centre in Baghdad or their bases throughout the country. They only venture out, heavily armed, to liaise with leaders whose authority in the community remains hard to gauge.
This may be a slightly exaggerated picture but on a military flight into Baghdad from the Jordanian capital Amman, evidence of this dynamic can be seen.
Flak jackets and helmets notwithstanding, most of the people in the C-130 look as if they are bureaucrats on a morning commute in the suburbs of Washington DC. These civilian contractors and Department of Defense and State Department personnel will probably never set foot outside the confines of the American network of bases and transportation in Iraq.
The Americans have built a parallel, virtual country in Iraq that most soldiers and American civilians never have to leave. "I'm not in Iraq," says one soldier in Balad. "This is the United States of Iraq."
Even the majority of soldiers seldom or never go "outside the wire", being engaged in support functions.
Contact with Iraqis is limited to the few who work on bases, are employed as translators or those who serve in the new Iraqi army.
The drawing down of troop strength is already fraying some parts of this virtual world.
The Green Zone is slowly being phased out, with buildings being handed over to the Iraqi government and security forces, to the dismay of some of the support units based there.
"Pretty soon we will be in the middle of the Red Zone," says a sergeant, referring to the Iraqi capital outside the enclave, which is regarded as unsafe.
With the dismantling of the Green Zone, a symbol of the foreign presence will disappear, although the Americans are building an enormous new embassy compound in the area that even some of their troops refer to as "a monstrosity" and which is likely to function as a mini-Green Zone inthe future.
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Citation: Ferry Biedermann. "End beckons for the 'United States of Iraq'," Financial Times, 02 February 2006.
Original URL: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/e67f89b0-9390-11da-a978-0000779e2340.html
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