http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/world/middleeast/us-scales-back-diplomacy-in-iraq-amid-fiscal-and-security-concerns.html

October 22, 2011

U.S. Scales Back Diplomacy in Iraq Amid Fiscal and Security Concerns

By TIM ARANGO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

BAGHDAD -- Beyond the final withdrawal of troops that President Obama announced Friday, America's fiscal troubles are dictating a drastic scaling back of plans for diplomatic, economic and cultural programs once deemed vital to steadying Iraq, building a long-term alliance and prying the country from Iran's tightening embrace.

As recently as this summer, the State Department had planned to establish a 700-person consulate in the still-restive northern city of Mosul. And as recently as the spring, the United States was moving ahead with plans for a consulate in the ethnically divided and potentially explosive city of Kirkuk.

Those plans have now been shelved or indefinitely postponed, and pleas from some Iraqi leaders to open diplomatic offices in the Shiite-dominated south, where Iran wields outsize influence, were summarily rejected.

Taken together, the shrinking of the United States' military and diplomatic ambitions underscores the reality that a post-America Iraq is taking shape more rapidly and completely than many Iraqis and Americans had envisioned. That has heartened many Iraqis and Americans, weary of more than eight years of war and occupation, but left others fearful.

"The United States should not turn its back on Iraq," Labid Abawi, the deputy foreign minister, said in an interview on Saturday. "Iraq needs the United States, and the United States needs Iraq."

The shifting relationship comes at a delicate time for Iraq and the region.

The country finds itself surrounded by nations undergoing significant change. Iran, which has long sought to increase its influence on its neighbor, has been emboldened by the Arab Spring, which ousted or diminished several Western-leaning leaders. At the same time, Syria has been suffering through months of unrest that Iraqi leaders fear could spill over the border, reopening what was once a thoroughfare for fighters from Al Qaeda.

Domestically, many issues remain unresolved. Twenty months after a national election, the country's leading political blocs cannot agree on who should run the Defense and Interior Ministries. The Parliament still has not passed legislation about how the country's oil and gas revenues should be divided -- years after the Bush administration set such a law as a benchmark for progress.

The issue of whether Baghdad or the Kurdish region should hold sway over Kirkuk also remains unresolved.

American officials emphasize that they still plan a major increase in diplomatic and cultural programs -- the building blocks of so-called soft power -- scattering branch offices across the country in the largest diplomatic mission since the Marshall Plan.

On Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stressed the ties that will remain -- and issued what appeared to be a barely veiled warning to Iran.

"As we open this new chapter in a relationship with a sovereign Iraq, to the Iraqis we say: America is with you as you take your next steps in your journey to secure your democracy," Mrs. Clinton told reporters in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. "And to the countries in the region, especially Iraq's neighbors, we want to emphasize that America will stand with our allies and friends, including Iraq, in defense of our security and interests."

But the expansion of a diplomatic presence will be much smaller than imagined, a victim not only of budgetary constraints but also of a growing awareness that the decision to withdraw American soldiers makes it much harder for diplomats to safely do their work. The State Department's more extensive plans were drawn up at a time when military officials were pushing to keep up to 20,000 soldiers in Iraq next year.

Christopher R. Hill, a former United States ambassador to Iraq, worries that even a less-expansive presence might be risky.

"I and many other people have concerns of the sustainability of keeping so many diplomats in so many far-flung places," he said. "If you don't have freedom of movement, you do go back to the question of whether it is worth the outlay of the budget and risk and personnel for keeping these people there."

The reactions in Baghdad on Friday night and Saturday, after Mr. Obama's remarks, were muted, a possible reflection of the country's mixed emotions.

Many Iraqis -- especially ethnic Kurds, secular intellectuals and Sunnis skittish about Shiite power -- have expressed anxiety about what the country might become without an American military presence.

"Obama's announcement to withdraw all U.S. troops is a victory for the Iraqis, but we have to be aware of Iranian influences and their attempts to exert control over Iraq," said Haidar al-Mulla, a spokesman and lawmaker with Iraqiya, the political bloc that won the most seats in last year's parliamentary elections.

But others, like those who recently celebrated the closing of a major American base in Mosul, saw only possibilities in the increasing signs that the United States was definitively pulling back. Students, poets and local officials raised the Iraqi flag on Monday and held placards that read, "Congratulations to the city of Mosul on this great day, the last occupier soldier has left."

One celebrant, Sheik Shakir Ghalib, said: "The day of the end of the occupation means such a great happiness I can't describe it. The happiness is overwhelming to me. As I see the people of my city celebrate the departure of the Americans from the city of prophets, my eyes cry and we pray for God to bless our martyrs and release our detainees."

The discussions over the last year about America's future role in Iraq, both within the United States government and between the two countries, have laid bare the diminishing ability of the United States to shape outcomes in Iraq, as well as a relative lack of interest in a Congress consumed by domestic issues.

"I guess very thoughtful people believe there should be some residual presence in Iraq," said Mr. Hill, who now runs the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. "But there are many Americans who don't want to hear the word 'Iraq' and are not really behind a continued presence."

Given that, Mr. Hill said, "I'm not surprised there is downward gravity about what we really want to see there."

The State Department's plans still need approval from the Iraqi government and financing from Congress. The department has requested $6.2 billion to finance its operations for the 2012 fiscal year.

The plans for Mosul were among those that fell victim not only to anticipated budgetary constraints, but also to the reality that the military was pulling out. Without American soldiers in the mix, the State Department realized that the vast majority of the 700-person staff would have to be contract security guards. Officials concluded that the cost of security outweighed the benefit of having a small number of diplomats and program officers in the field.

In Kirkuk -- where the potential for violence had previously been the centerpiece of arguments by military officials for a longer troop presence -- the State Department indefinitely postponed plans for a consulate. It will now rely on an office to be financed by the Pentagon to maintain a bare-bones diplomatic function.

An even earlier plan called for a branch office in Diyala Province, but that was quickly abandoned. Two consulates have, however, been opened, in Basra and Erbil.

Other programs were also affected. State Department plans had called for nearly 350 contract workers for an ambitious police training effort, according to an American official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans were meant to be confidential. Now the figure is close to 100.

There will now be 10 Office of Security Cooperation locations, which manage the sale of weapons and training, when previous plans called for 15.

The stakes in Iraq remain clear, as do the inevitable questions about its future. Will a fragile government tilt toward authoritarianism and more violence, or become stable and democratic? Will the United States leave a positive legacy, a return of sorts for what it spent in lives and dollars over the course of the war? That is a goal no number of troops could guarantee.

"There were never going to be enough to guarantee an acceptable outcome," said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "It would have slightly increased the odds."

Mr. Hill, the former ambassador, expressed similar misgivings about whether any amount of continued intervention could create the strong ally the United States hoped would be the legacy of a war that took so many American and Iraqi lives and strained America's coffers.

"We can say it is an ally," Mr. Hill said, "but an invasion is never a very good basis for forming an alliance."

Omar al-Jawoshy contributed reporting from Baghdad, an employee of The New York Times from Mosul, Iraq, and Steven Lee Myers from Dushanbe, Tajikistan.