The United States has withdrawn its troops from Iraq after 22 years, but the country now faces a problem that Afghanistan did not encounter even after the departure of American forces.
US Troops Leave Iraq After 22 Years of Occupation
Iraqi authorities announced that all US combat units and logistical support forces had completely left the country ahead of the agreed deadline for a full withdrawal on September 30.
The government headed by Prime Minister Ali al-Zeidi is presenting the development as a historic victory and the complete restoration of national sovereignty. Official statements emphasize that from October 1, the country "will be completely free of any foreign military presence.”
Pro-Iranian proxies in Iraq are celebrating the US departure as a military triumph after years of struggle. In Baghdad, they are being pressured to disarm now that the enemy has withdrawn, but Shiite leaders have declared that they "will not surrender their weapons until the region is completely cleared of American influence.”
In the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region in the north and in the Sunni provinces, the mood is far less celebratory. There, people are openly voicing concerns about security as "sleeper cells of ISIS* awaken.” At the same time, Tehran will no longer strike Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, where US military bases were located and which came under more than 1,000 missile and drone attacks during the Middle Eastern war.
Tehran will also see some easing of the situation, as the US-Israeli plan to use Kurdish forces for a large-scale ground offensive against Iran failed and has been definitively abandoned.
Iraq's Fate Has Turned Out Worse Than Afghanistan's
Although the withdrawal of US troops was not as chaotic as the departure from Afghanistan, the outcomes of the two campaigns are similar. As in Afghanistan, the United States attempted to build a Western-style democracy in Iraq by military means, but failed and generated hatred among a population that buried more than a million of its fellow citizens.
The East lives according to its own rules and its own ethno-confessional structure, which is often tribal, as in Iraq among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Under the Sunni Saddam Hussein, Iraq was a safe country with a growing economy; today, that is far from the case. No one has complete control over anything, and Iraq faces difficult and bloody times ahead as the balance of power is reshaped.
But what the United States controls above all is Iraq's oil revenues, roughly according to the same scheme used in Venezuela. All export revenues are transferred to a special account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRB) Middle East Eye Rudaw Research Center and reach Iraqi accounts only after approval by the US administration. That is precisely why Iraq's fate is even worse than Afghanistan's and remains far from achieving sovereignty. In Kabul, at least, a centralized authority has been established that controls its own resources and can bring China and Russia into their development, receiving the proceeds directly into its own accounts.
*A terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation.
Source: Pravda.Ru
