Keeping U.S. Troops in Mosul

The first concrete signs that the U.S. forces may be staying in Iraqi cities past a June 30 deadline to withdrawal came this week. The U.S. commander in Mosul says American troops will remain in the volatile northern city if asked by the Iraqi government. Many Iraqis I talk to seem to think that U.S. troops will be slow to leave Mosul and other cities in any case despite the standing U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement. Indeed it’s hard to imagine a life in Baghdad at this point without the presence of the U.S. military, which still clogs the street with armored vehicles and shakes the sky with helicopters, every day.

I tend to think the Iraqi government will not be asking U.S. troops to stay in Mosul or anywhere else, however. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki never wanted surge troops in the first place. Even when violence was at its worst, al-Maliki would have rather been left alone to handle things with his army and police, whose counter-insurgency methods have at times involved human rights abuses and cooperating with militias. Given the choice again, I suspect he’ll go the same way.