Iraq as It Is

Iraq has been an enemy, a friend, and a frenemy of the United States, depending on the administration in Washington. Now, after two years of relative stability in Iraq and a new government in the United States, the two countries may finally be on the path to sustainable relations. In early August, representatives from both countries met in Washington to launch negotiations on a long-term defense partnership. This dialogue and any potential agreement to follow may settle an enduring question: what kind of relationship should the United States seek with Iraq?

Past attempts by U.S. policymakers to answer this question have drawn on the various roles Iraq has played in the American psyche. Under Saddam Hussein, it was a sanctioned pariah state, an enemy purportedly hell-bent on using weapons of mass destruction; after the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam’s regime, Iraq in turn became an experiment in nation building, a half-hearted partner in the war against terrorism, and a marionette controlled by Iran. Now, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has assigned itself the task of moving beyond this shifting legacy and normalizing the relationship once and for all.

The 2,000 or so U.S. troops stationed in Iraq today focus on training and advising Iraq’s security forces. The end goal is for Iraqi forces to operate autonomously, but for now, the U.S. military conducts campaigns against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Iraq and Syria in cooperation with local partners—including 313 such operations in 2022. Under a new U.S.-Iraqi agreement, technical support and advising will likely continue, with greater emphasis on eventual independence for the Iraqi military—particularly elite units—in the field. Making this transition possible will require better coordination among Iraq’s diffuse security forces, which often compete instead of cooperate.

One factor complicating progress in U.S.-Iraqi relations is the proliferation of militias that report to the prime minister but operate outside the formal command structure of the Iraqi military and, in some cases, appear guided by Iran. There may be a temptation in Washington to predicate future cooperation with Baghdad on the elimination of this channel of Iranian influence, but such an approach would be a mistake. Iraq does not need its already wobbly sovereignty undermined further by misguided U.S. meddling. What it needs is the ability to provide for its citizens and rein in the militias on its own. Helping Iraq strengthen its state capacity is the best way to move toward a more normal, cordial U.S.-Iraqi relationship and to serve the interests of the Iraqi people—without compromising the United States’ own security. 

BREAKING THE CYCLE

The recent history of U.S.-Iraqi relations is a story of recurring conflict. In the decade before the first Gulf War, Iraq was on Washington’s radar primarily as Iran’s opponent in a grueling war that lasted from 1980 to 1988. When President Ronald Reagan’s secret sale of weapons to Iran was exposed in the Iran-contra affair, the blowback pushed Washington to open up somewhat to Baghdad. After the war ended, Iraq became both a major market for Midwestern grain despite concerns that it was amassing weapons of mass destruction. With Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Baghdad went from trade partner to strategic adversary. President George H. W. Bush launched a war to liberate Kuwait, hoping, in the process, to destroy Saddam’s elite units and render him vulnerable to a domestic revolt. This plan did not pan out. The administration of President Bill Clinton continued to encourage plots against Saddam, and for the rest of the 1990s, the United States waged economic war on Iraqi civilians through punishing sanctions.

President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion finally toppled Saddam’s regime, triggering a civil war that killed tens of thousands. As the U.S. occupation dragged on, the Bush administration struggled to back a new Iraqi leadership whose objectives aligned with Washington’s. Left with little choice, it settled for Nouri al-Maliki, a staunch Shiite politician, as prime minister. Many Sunnis refused to deal with Maliki, however, setting up a persistent state of political instability. When the administration of President Barack Obama withdrew U.S. forces in 2011, both Iran and radical Sunni insurgents capitalized on Iraq’s precarious state. Iran infiltrated biddable Shiite militias, and aggrieved Sunnis joined with Syrian ISIS fighters to seize large swaths of Iraqi territory. Washington’s initial prevarication in the face of this onslaught left the door open to Iraq’s Shiite militias to counter this new threat, bolstering their own position in the process. 

The relationship remained fraught under the administration of President Donald Trump. Officials considered Iraq an Iranian puppet and treated the country with suspicion and contempt, including by killing Iran’s Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, along with the high-ranking Iraqi militia official Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis outside Baghdad’s airport. Under Biden, Washington has so far emphasized economic collaboration while downplaying military relations between the United States and Iraq—a shift made possible by the gradual decomposition of ISIS in recent years.

Now, the Biden administration is turning its attention to the military component of the relationship. The statement released in August after the inaugural meeting of the U.S.-Iraq Joint Security Cooperation Dialogue, as the current bilateral defense negotiations are officially known, primarily addressed efforts already underway to contain ISIS and to train Iraq’s security forces. But the talks may also yield a broader framework for a sustainable security relationship. And critically, they could set the foundations for an eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops. As the Pentagon official Dana Stroul told reporters, “I think it’s fair to say decades into the future, U.S. forces will not be present in Iraq in the current formation that we are today.” Stroul’s phrasing may be overly cautious, but the message is clear: the United States will scale down its military presence.

There is no treaty committing the United States to come to Iraq’s defense.

For now, U.S. military assistance to Iraq will continue. But there are ways to focus these efforts. Rather than make open-ended commitments to the sprawling Iraqi military, Washington should concentrate on its most effective elements, such as the Counter Terrorism Service (a special operations force and a key U.S. partner in anti-ISIS campaigns) and the Federal Intelligence and Investigation Agency (an agency responsible for counterterrorism and organized crime). U.S. military trainers should prioritize mission planning, encouraging coordination and information sharing among different Iraqi units and increasing those units’ capacity to conduct surveillance and collect intelligence in order to choose the right targets. Iraqi forces will also need to develop their capacity for limited combined-arms operations, which bring together infantry maneuvers, air support, and artillery fire in mutually supporting ways. As we have seen in Ukraine’s fight against Russian forces, mastering such operations is difficult and takes time. Expectations in Iraq should be modest. U.S. advisers must also be realistic about the training they introduce. Adopting procedures and technology that will require indefinite U.S. handholding will prove frustrating for both Washington and Baghdad.

As the United States and Iraq advance toward normal diplomatic relations, the drawdown of U.S. forces should follow. Executing that drawdown while sustaining aid will be a difficult needle to thread—the two goals are in tension with each other. A good way to start is to replace Operation Inherent Resolve, the campaign the United States launched against ISIS in 2014, with a mission that is narrower in scope. This could include a small group of advisers working under the Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq in Baghdad, which is responsible for managing security assistance and facilitating U.S.-Iraqi cooperation. OSC-I, however, is affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense but reports to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq, and its position between the Pentagon and the State Department imposes some limits on the support it can offer a partner military. The advisers under its purview may therefore be supplemented by a second, more flexible mission operated by U.S. Central Command. This small deployment of special operations soldiers highly trained in counterterrorism could assist with training and intelligence operations. Together, this lower-footprint military presence could offer a glide path toward normalization.

A nonmilitarized relationship is a realistic end goal. After all, the U.S. troop presence in Iraq has been declining for years. And absent a war with Iran or a resurgence of ISIS, this trend will continue. There is no treaty committing the United States to come to Iraq’s defense. And the Iraqi government would be loath to seek any such commitment by identifying another state as a threat from which Iraq needs defending, lest it antagonize its neighbors and create the very security crisis it wishes to avoid. Instead, both sides envisage a low-key form of cooperation that de-emphasizes the prospect of U.S. combat operations inside Iraq. U.S. policymakers still need a plan for drawing down the remaining 2,000 or so U.S. troops in Iraq over the next few years, but the current accentuation of economic issues and relatively modest military coordination and assistance suggest a desired future for Iraq as a friend, not an ally, of the United States.

THE MILITIA PROBLEM

This attitude within the U.S. government has emerged despite the presence in Iraq of some Shiite militias that ultimately look to Tehran, rather than Baghdad, for guidance. Skeptics of U.S. cooperation with the Iraqi government often point to its tolerance for these arrangements as evidence of Iraqi perfidy. And they see the Biden administration’s willingness to live with this situation, rather than cracking down militarily or making U.S. assistance conditional on corralling the militias, as evidence of American fecklessness. In this view, Iraq is at best an ambivalent partner and at worst a tacit foe. Given the extent of Iran’s influence, the argument goes, Iraq cannot act as an independent regional partner.

The competing loyalties within Iraq’s army are undoubtedly a problem. But hybrid armies are also a reality of the twenty-first century. The sociologist Max Weber’s definition of a state as having a “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” may no longer apply. National governments increasingly contract out the use of force to nonstate actors. In Syria’s civil war, for example, state-sponsored mercenaries known as “shabiha” have been key combatants on the side of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. These hybrid arrangements can prove risky. In Russia, the Wagner private military company recently challenged the authority of the Kremlin, only to be cut down to size weeks later, and in Sudan, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have torn the state to shreds. But Iraqi militias have no interest in displacing the state that feeds them, nor the capacity to do so.

In Iraq, militias emerged from the anarchic conditions created by the U.S. occupation. When the 2003 invasion eliminated the Iraqi state’s capacity to maintain order and provide services, warlords picked up the slack, using ethnic and religious identity to manufacture their own legitimacy and authority. Outside powers exploited this development, too. Iran provided advice and resources directly to Shiite militias, and the United States supported Sunni militias, such as the Sons of Iraq. As Iraqis struggled to reconstitute their state, no single actor had the power or incentive to disband these groups or force them to enter a national, nonsectarian military. The growth of ISIS in 2014 provided the Shiite militias with a golden opportunity. They made themselves indispensable by organizing quickly to counter ISIS when it was on the doorstep of Baghdad. More recently, when the Shiite firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr pushed Iraq into a violent political crisis after the 2022 parliamentary elections, it was the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella of Shiite militias with ties to Iran—not the Iraqi army—that successfully battled his followers.

The Iraqi militias are here to stay.

In Iraq, militias hinder the state from fully consolidating its authority even as they occasionally step in to address state shortcomings. Furthermore, militias soak up unemployed young men who might otherwise engage in criminal or violent activities. Militias may offer only meager salaries, but they help keep Iraq’s anemic economy afloat and their recruits out of trouble. As in other countries with hybrid armies, militias in Iraq have created business interests whose profits make them partially self-sustainable, reducing the cost of security for the federal government. In the long run, however, the militias’ forays into business further compromise the country’s economic growth through corruption and inefficient models of development—a debilitating public-private partnership of a kind that is hardly unique to Iraq.

From the United States’ perspective, Iranian-backed militias pose a threat. Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba and Kataib Hezbollah in particular have picked fights with U.S. forces based in Iraq. With few exceptions, the militias have benefited from cover from the Iraqi government—the same government that authorized the U.S. military presence on Iraqi soil. This is no doubt irritating for Washington and a potential source of escalation between the United States and Iran as long as U.S. troops remain in Iraq. But the solution to this dilemma is not to fight the militias directly or compel the Iraqi government to rein them in. Doing so would only further undermine the sovereignty of an Iraqi state weakened by the presence of the Iranian-backed militias.

Instead, the sensible approach for Washington is to strengthen the capacity of the Iraqi state through the slower, less coercive, and ultimately more sustainable levers of traditional diplomacy, targeted aid, and economic cooperation. The militias are here to stay, and challenging them directly would only increase their relevance and leverage—handing the Iranian government a win. Working with the government in Baghdad is far more promising. On the question of the U.S. troop presence, Iraq’s political factions and the militias affiliated with them largely accept the position of their country’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who has backed the continuing presence of U.S. military personnel to help develop the Iraqi armed forces. Furthermore, it appears as though a gradual process of integrating militias into the military command structure might be underway, which will eventually impose limits on their independent action.

WHAT AMERICA OWES IRAQ

The mischief of pro-Iranian militias should not deter Washington from extending support to Baghdad, nor should the more complex problem of Iraq’s hybrid military structure. U.S. diplomacy has already turned its attention to other serious problems afflicting Iraq. The overall U.S. approach is to move beyond security concerns and prioritize these pressing economic and humanitarian matters.

For one, the Iraqi government is unable to ensure a consistent, round-the-clock electricity supply, which significantly hinders the country’s productivity. Iraq’s agriculture sector, which employs 18 percent of the population, has taken a severe hit due to drought, poor water management, and temperatures that soar above 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. According to a 2021 survey conducted by the International Labour Organization, unemployment stands at 17 percent overall—and 28 percent for women and 36 percent for youth. Gleaming malls and thriving markets in Baghdad, a rejuvenated riverfront in Mosul, and an economic resurgence in the frequently besieged Anbar Province make for appealing photos to accompany stories about Iraq’s post-ISIS recovery, but the truth is that most Iraqis struggle to make ends meet. The youth of Iraq’s population does create a demographic profile that correlates with higher levels of violence. But the government’s failure to provide for a swiftly expanding population presents a greater menace to Iraq’s future than terrorism does. And persistent government shortcomings will only feed the terrorist threat.

Washington has an ethical responsibility to help Iraqis rectify this situation. Over the course of 30 years the United States has inflicted grave damage on Iraq. A realpolitik approach would eschew an argument based on moral imperative, but in this case, ethics and national interest are on the same side. Helping Iraq recover from decades of conflict, rather than blaming it for a militia structure that is itself the product of the U.S. invasion, would make the United States’ regional posture more secure and enhance its reputation for reliability.

The United States has the tools it needs to aid Iraq. It should supplement its troop presence by facilitating investment, providing technical assistance for climate resilience efforts, and empowering Iraqi security services to operate independently. Washington has leverage, too. It is the Iraqi security forces’ most important partner and the largest single provider of humanitarian assistance to the country. Still, it should be clear-eyed about what it can and cannot accomplish in Iraq. U.S. interests will at times bring it into conflict with Baghdad, and U.S. diplomats and military officials will not always be able to monitor or influence their Iraqi partners. But Washington and Baghdad must work together toward a future where the Iraqi state is not reliant on U.S. troops to underwrite its own security and cohesion. The alternative is to keep Iraq in a perpetual state of dependence on the United States, which itself has competing priorities and domestic politics to contend with. The most urgent challenges Iraq and the United States face are not the kind that can be resolved by deploying 2,000 U.S. troops indefinitely.