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BOMBING FROM BEHIND?
AN ASSESSMENT OF US STRATEGYVIS-À-VIS ISIL
Jean-Loup Samaan
1
It’s harder to end a war than begin one. Indeed, everything that American troops have done
in Iraq – all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training
and the partnering – all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect
place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and
self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.
President Barack Obama,
“Welcome Home” speech at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, 14 December 2011.
O
n 15
th
December 2011, as the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq fulfilled one
of the main Obama campaign promises, the future of the country looked at
best uncertain. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), negotiated by the US
Department of Defense with the Iraqi authorities, was below the level of the security
demands identified by the planners in Washington. Additionally, the government of Nuri
al Maliki was implementing a series of controversial sectarian policies that raised concerns
of a new civil war between Sunni and Shia communities.
2
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Syria, the initially peaceful, spontaneous revolution
against the Assad regime was turning into a bloody civil war. Soon the void engendered
1 Researcher at the Middle East Faculty of the NATO Defense College (Rome, Italy). The views expressed
here are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of NATO or the NATO Defense College.
2 On Maliki’s political style, see Dodge T (2012).
Iraq: from war to a new authoritarianism
, London:
Routledge.