US soldiers depart from Iraq's towns and cities

THE withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi towns and cities six years after the US-led invasion in 2003 is surely glad tidings for the people of Iraq. After all, it is Iraqis who have, in all these years since US and British troops invaded the country on the dubious question of the Saddam Hussein regime concealing weapons of mass destruction, paid a high price in terms of loss of lives and destruction of property. One of the more disturbing manifestations of the invasion of Iraq was the swift breakdown of law and order followed by the rise of extremist groups convinced that the foreigners had to be pushed out of the country. Tensions between the Shia and Sunni communities took an unprecedented shape and tens of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives in such diverse tragedies as suicide killings and assaults by western forces. Not even the Baghdad offices of the United Nations were spared. While Saddam Hussein and his associates met with a grisly end, Iraqis fell prey to chaos of a kind they had never before experienced in their lives. As many as 4,321 American soldiers have been killed in the country since April 2003.
Against such a background, the return of Iraq's towns and cities to the control of the Iraqi government is an important first step in the country's return to sovereignty. Nothing has been more galling for Iraqis than to feel that an immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein was a loss of sovereign status for Iraq. A good fraction of that sovereignty will now come back to the country. It is this feeling that cheers many Iraqis, who have been celebrating the departure of the Americans in the streets. Yet it is also true that American and other western troops will not be departing completely and in fact will be staying on till 2011, by which time their governments expect Iraqi politicians to assert complete control over the country. That in essence means a continuation of the occupation and an Iraqi government operating per courtesy of Washington and its friends. Between now and then, therefore, Iraqis as well as people around the world cannot but hope that things will not spiral out of control again.
Credit must be given to the Obama administration for recognizing early on that the United States could not be expected to stay in Iraq indefinitely. Its stance is clearly a departure from the position adopted by the Bush administration in that President Obama has a clear sense of the priorities he believes America should pursue as part of his policy of change.
Let us now hope that change will from here on mark the transition to respectable nationhood for Iraq, that Iraqis will find new purpose through inaugurating real democratic governance for themselves.