Upon the assumption of the US presidency by Barack Obama in 2008, the American policy towards the Middle East has tried to nail down an impression of change.

As early as the campaign period in America, Obama was personified as an agent of change for ordinary Americans. A BBC report highlighted the promise of a pull-out as ‘a defining characteristic of his 2008 candidacy’. For critics of former President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, Obama’s declaration of a pull-out from Iraq is a step forward.

In a speech delivered to the national convention of the Disabled American Veterans in Georgia, Obama stated the cessation of all combat operations in Iraq by August 31, affirming that the end of operations would arrive ‘as promised and on schedule’.

According to a report from BBC, Obama said: ‘But make no mistake, our commitment in Iraq is changing – from a military effort led by our troops to a civilian effort led by our diplomats.’

Sadiq al-Rikabi, a senior adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said to the Associated Press that Iraq is ‘now celebrating the restoration of sovereignty’.

Despite this, reports of Hoda-Abdel Hamid of Al Jazeera tell that an ‘anxiety in the air’ is felt among the populace as tighter security measures were imposed. People are ‘extremely nervous’, thinking ‘if more roadside bombs are planted’.

Mahmoud Almusafir, a former Iraqi diplomat, views the pull-out as a ‘face-saving’ strategy. He elaborated, ‘For me and all the Iraqis, this is the day the Americans confessed that they can't go more in Iraq, and they can't control the cities, they can't control Iraq.’

A month before the pull-out deadline, Iraq claimed that 535 people died, making July ‘the deadliest month in the country for more than two years’. A marked discrepancy can be spotted relative to the report from the US military, with 222 lost lives.

Regardless of the number of troops removed from the battlefield, it is clear that the American government will not simply loosen its grip of the Middle East.

Despite the announced pull-out, 50,000 US troops will to remain until 2011 ‘to advise Iraqi forces and protect US interests’, not to mention the establishment of 94 bases in Iraq after August 31 where most of the remaining troops will be stationed. Moreover, not all troops from Iraq were sent back to the United States, as 30,000 soldiers were re-deployed in Afghanistan along with 50,000 NATO troops and 97,000 Afghan troops. Private contractors will also join the troops in uniform. A Congressional Research Service study reports that the US Department of Defense (DOD) ‘increasingly relies upon contractors to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan’, deploying 207,600 contractor personnel, 19% more than the uniformed personnel in those countries combined. In effect, contractors comprise 54% of the DOD’s workforce.

At the Afghanistan front, there appears no sign of the US War of Terror winding down. The deadline for the United States to pull-out its troops from Afghanistan is on July 2011, yet with barely a year left, no concrete strategy is forthcoming from the Obama administration until December this year. For some analysts, Washington seems to be ‘running out of options’ and may be forced to negotiate directly with the Taliban, a proposal held by President Karzai since 2009.

A problem seen with this proposition would be the willingness as well as the capacity of the warring parties to bring about peace through negotiations. The patent corruption and incompetence of the US-backed Karzai government, the rearmament of the non-Pashtun minority in the north and the complicated role of Pakistan – its army maintaining ties to both the US and the Taliban -- all add gunpowder to the powder keg in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, a report entitled ‘Afghanistan Today’ confirms that continuing poverty, joblessness and government corruption has eroded the legitimacy of the Karzai government in the eyes of the Afghan people.

With these trends, Afghanistan is turning out to be ‘Obama’s Vietnam’.

Download  Resist Newsletter October 2010

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