U.S. troop pullback is test for a new U.S.-Iraq relationship

Nonetheless analysts said the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraqi cities will be less dramatic than it seems because the military, while less visible, can still intervene if Iraqi security forces appeal for help.

“We're getting to one of the major milestones of the security agreement,” according to Chris Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

The pullback starting Tuesday is in line with last November's Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which sets out a timetable for a complete U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq by 2011.

“As we go forward with the security agreement, we will also be moving ahead on something called the Strategic Framework Agreement,” Hill told reporters during a visit to Washington on June 18.

“And this is an agreement which will really govern our relationship for, we hope, decades to come, that will involve our educational exchanges, economic relations, various political exchanges,” he added.

To boost regional stability, Hill urged more Sunni Arab states to renew ties with an Iraq that is now led by Shiites and not by Saddam Hussein, a fellow Sunni who was toppled in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and hanged in 2006.

In a memo this month to General Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S.-led forces in Iraq, strategist Anthony Cordesman said non-military U.S. support for the fledgling nation is now bound to be more effective than armed intervention.

His memo, which was published on the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) website, cautioned: “The U.S. should not phase out aid too quickly in the areas where there are ethnic and sectarian fault lines.

“Limited amounts of aid can be used to enhance dialogue (sic), to try and bridge differences, and lever the kind of positive action that can bring various sides together,” said the strategist for the Washington-based CSIS.

The government in Baghdad is still struggling to reconcile Sunnis and Shiites as well as Arabs and Kurds in order to forge a functioning multi-ethnic democracy.

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