Iraqis uneasy about US troops departing
Fears are raised about security
BAGHDAD - The unthinkable is happening in Sadr City as the US military begins to shut down its outposts to meet a June 30 deadline to withdraw from Iraqi cities.
Separation anxiety is growing among residents, local leaders, and American soldiers in the sprawling, impoverished Shi'ite district that was once the most dangerous battlefield in Baghdad for US troops.
"When the Americans leave, everything will be looted because no one will be watching," an Iraqi army lieutenant newly deployed there said. "There will be a civil war - without a doubt," predicted an Iraqi interpreter. Council members have asked about political asylum in the United States.
Mohammed Alami, a local leader who calls himself the US Embassy's unofficial representative in Sadr City, is among those expecting mayhem.
"This is the most dangerous decision being made," he said recently after a meeting at a US outpost in Sadr City. "We will lose the security. The insurgents will come back. I will be the first one targeted."
The deadline, the first of three that chart the withdrawal of US troops, will test Iraqi forces and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's assertion that his government stands ready to assume primary control over security. The Iraqi government insisted on the deadlines last year during the negotiation of a security agreement.
For the Obama administration, the deadline and the months that follow will be a key test of whether a campaign promise to withdraw "responsibly" is feasible. Some US officials have begun to see it as a perilous turning point, if violence surges as the military loses influence, mobility, and combat power.
"The bottom line is they are not ready for us to give over the cities," a senior US military official said on the condition of anonymity to speak critically of the Iraqis. "If we do, and all indications are that they will make us leave, we will be in a firefight to get back in and stop the violence. And we will lose soldiers."
Several key details about the June 30 deadline remain unresolved. Iraqi leaders have not said how many, if any, mechanized units and outposts they will let the Americans keep in Baghdad and Mosul, a northern city riven by violence. And there is no consensus on the definition of combat troops.
The US military built dozens of small combat outposts and joint security stations in 2007 as part of a strategy that helped turn the tide in a war that many at the time viewed as a lost cause. By injecting tens of thousands of American soldiers into volatile neighborhoods, the then-incoming commander of US troops in Iraq, General David Petraeus, reversed course on his predecessor's goal of pulling back US forces and leaving the Iraqis in the lead.
Sadr City, the bastion of the Mahdi Army, a Shi'ite militia commanded by cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, became one of the deadliest battlefields for US soldiers.
Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Karcher, the battalion commander based in Sadr City, said he is optimistic about the transition. The Iraqi army unit based in Sadr City has come a long way, he said.
The June 30 deadline, Karcher said, will not mark the overnight departure of US forces from urban areas. Instead, it will force the Americans to adhere to a concept they have, to varying degrees, paid lip service to over the past three years: putting the Iraqis in charge. 