The security agreement and an accompanying document that outlines America's relationship with Iraq in areas like economic cooperation, health care, education and culture, would grant Iraq considerable authority and power over American military operations, requiring court orders to search buildings and detain suspects. At the same time, it also sets out a timetable requiring American troops to withdraw from cities and towns by June 30, 2009, and for all troops to leave the country by the end of 2011, unless Iraqis and Americans negotiate a separate agreement to extend the presence of the American military.
The agreement enjoyed broad support across sectarian lines, largely because of the intervention and insistence of Iraq's most powerful Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who, from his office in Najaf, has appealed to leaders from every religious faction for reconciliation.
Al-Sistani told legislators and other members of the Iraqi government that it was not enough just to get the agreement accepted, but that they needed to build broad national consensus. That, of course, meant that Shiite and Kurdish legislators, who backed the agreement from the very beginning, had to add new elements and measures to the broad agreement to satisfy the wary Sunnis.
Because of this, along with the security agreement, a nonbinding resolution that included a commitment to address longstanding grievances of minority blocs in parliament, as well as a law requiring a referendum on the agreement were also approved.
The referendum, to be held in July, will allow voters to decide whether security in the country has improved enough to cancel the agreement. If voters decided to reject the deal, it would trigger a so-called cancellation clause in the agreement. Technically, that would accelerate the withdrawal of American troops to mid-2010.
Many Sunnis and independents in parliament regard the referendum as a measure to justify their support of the security agreement, and that is why they demanded that it be approved, so that they can claim that it is the people who would have the final say on the agreement.
At the same time, the approval of the referendum is seen as a way to ensure that the Americans respect and fulfill the agreement's terms in full -- at least in the coming months. In this regard, Adnan Pachachi, a senior member of the secular Iraqiya Party, was quoted as saying, "The referendum will make the Americans more careful and they will not make mistakes that will cause the Iraqi people to reject the agreement."
Well, Pachachi is right, of course. With the shadow of a referendum hanging over them, the American military will act very carefully with the implementation of the agreement so as not to endanger the three-year duration of the agreement, simply because it needs at least three years to complete a full withdrawal, a fact we know from statements made by American military officials recently.
In this regard, The Wall Street Journal's Yochi J. Dreazen wrote: "In recent interviews, two high-ranking officers stated flatly that it would be logistically impossible to dismantle dozens of large US bases there and withdraw the 150,000 troops now in Iraq [that] quickly. The officers said it would take close to three years for a full withdrawal and could take longer if fighting resumed as US forces left the country."
In addition to these officers the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, also estimated that "getting it all out safely [bases as well as troops] would take at least two to three years."
In the final analysis, the agreement, with its apt referendum clause, is favorable for both Iraq and the US because on the one hand it satisfies the needs of the US military and on the other hand, it paves the way for the end of occupation and the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty.
Benzer Haberler 
