Needlenose

I was surprised at first by this post-SOFA approval development in Iraq, summarized over the weekend by the Washington Post:

Iraq’s preeminent Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has expressed concern about the country’s security agreement with the United States, saying it gives the Americans the upper hand and does not do enough to protect Iraqi sovereignty, an official at his office said Saturday.

Sistani, whose words carry great weight in Iraq, did not reject the pact outright and indicated that he would leave it to voters to decide its fate in a national referendum to be held by July 30. His comments will almost certainly bring pressure on the Shiite-led government and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to fulfill their promise to hold the vote.

It was always my impression that Sistani’s oft-cited reservations about the agreement were the key spine-stiffening element behind prime minister Maliki’s tough negotiating stance with the U.S., but I had thought there was also an element of calculation and coordination involved — specifically, pleading the need to placate Sistani and the rest of the marjaiya was part of Maliki’s bargaining strategy.

Beneath it all, I felt sure the old guy was pragmatic enough to accept the final deal as the best they could hope for under Bush (and especially tolerable since Bush and his neocon backers wouldn’t be around to renege on its terms).  With this new statement, was the grand ayatollah really experiencing what some circles on the left are calling “buyer’s remorse” about the agreement?

Then I came to my senses.  Sistani had been briefed about the negotiations every step of the way — if he genuinely objected to the agreement’s terms, he could have killed it singlehandedly by denouncing it before the legislature voted.  Instead, he chose to let it pass.  Nor did he explicitly demand a referendum, which allowed the Maliki government to offer it as a fig-leaf concession to opposition parties.  Nor was he demanding that the Iraqi public be allowed to weigh in before the rather leisurely midyear schedule approved by the legislature.

Which leads me to think that Sistani’s real goal is to defuse any public opposition by seeming to share their concerns but postponing any action until the middle of the year.  Not coincidentally, the timing of the referendum places it after the deadline for U.S. troops pulling out of Iraqi cities, which will help the Maliki regime in making its case for approval.

Other hints dropped in various news accounts suggest a range of side benefits as well.  By voicing concerns over the implementation of the agreement, Sistani keeps the carrot-and-stick of his approval in place for the incoming Obama administration, positioning Maliki to push for more concessions around the edges of the accord to ensure that the referendum passes.

At the same time, he and the marjaiya get to distance themselves from the government, whose ineptitude and corruption have tarnished their image after they used their influence to bring it to power.  And Sistani is able to extend a rhetorical olive branch to the Sadrists, keeping the option of their return to the mainstream political fold open, even as the practical effect is to suck the oxygen out of their opposition to the SOFA and marginalize them further.

That grand ayatollah is a pretty smart guy.

Update: Via the sidebar of Abu Aardvark, Iraqi vice president Adel Abed al-Mahdi (a top pol in the Shiite hierarchy allied with Maliki) is quoted in an Arabic-language article as saying the “referendum gives us leverage in the negotiations” with the U.S., just as I described above. So I guess they’re not even hiding it.

Like, perhaps, some holiday get-togethers, the Iraqi parliament’s long-awaited vote on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the U.S. turned out to be somewhat anticlimactic.  From Reuters:

Iraq’s parliament on Thursday approved a landmark security pact with the United States that paves the way for U.S. forces to withdraw by the end of 2011, taking the country a big step closer to full sovereignty.

The deal, which parliament linked to a series of promised political reforms and a public referendum next year, brings in sight an end to the U.S. military presence that began with the 2003 invasion.

. . . Lawmakers in Iraq’s 275 seat parliament passed the deal with 149 MPs out of 198 present voting.

. . . “The withdrawal, theoretically, is completed at the end of December 2011, but we are expectant and hopeful that we could achieve that earlier,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.

In an article before the vote, Reuters noted what a victory this is for the Iraqi government:

. . . the deal gives Iraq formal authority over the U.S. presence for the first time, replacing a U.N. security council mandate. U.S. troops must quit Iraqi towns and villages by the middle of next year, then leave Iraq within three years.

That will greatly strengthen the hand of Maliki and his Shi’ite-led government, which will continue to enjoy the benefits of U.S. military backing whilst scoring nationalist points for being the ones who ushered it out.

Conversely, today’s vote seems to marginalize the Sadrists, who have staked their claim to popularity on opposing the occupation, but were left helplessly (if entertainingly at times) on the sidelines as Maliki negotiated its end.  And the Sunnis in the legislature weren’t left with much, either, as Reidar Visser relates:

The developments in the Iraqi parliament today very much went in the direction Maliki wanted them to go, even if the opposition managed to create at least a degree of friction . . . today’s package of legislation is sadly reminiscent of many of the deals that have been cut with the Maliki government since 2006: it bestows ample privileges on the Iraqi government in return for promises of reform that are both vague and without a clearly defined timeline.

Even the one tangible concession — that of a public referendum on the agreement sometime in mid-2009 — is less than meets the eye.  Spencer Ackerman did the math yesterday and explained that given the six-month lag time and the one-year notice required for cancelling the agreement, a withdrawal forced by the referendum failing would basically match the timeline proposed by Barack Obama (and endorsed by the Iraqi government).   So Maliki & Co. get what they want either way… as usual.

(P.S.  Via ThinkProgress, a PDF of an English translation of the agreement is here.)

In the post just below, I waxed atypically (if faintly) optimistic about politics taking precedence over violence in the Iraqi debate over the U.S. SOFA/troop withdrawal agreement.  I was also impressed by the Maliki government letting a Sadrist anti-SOFA protest take place — yes, such protests had been occurring regularly for the past few months, but I figured that those actually strengthened the government’s hand in negotiations with the Americans (”We’d love to make more concessions, but alas, we have to placate those noisy Sadrists!”).  With the agreement signed, I guessed Maliki would find dissent less useful.

But, as occasionally happens despite my best efforts, I may once again not have been cynical enough in my assessment.  At least, that’s what occurred to me on reading this Washington Post story over the weekend:

Iraq’s defense minister warned Saturday that the government would declare a state of emergency if there was no agreement to keep U.S. forces in the country past the end of the year.

The threat by Abdul Qadir Muhammed Jassim appeared aimed at pressuring parliament to approve a security accord allowing U.S. troops to stay three more years.

Jassim has been a strong supporter of the agreement, which would replace a United Nations mandate that expires Dec. 31. But his language Saturday was unusually stark. . . .

“There are armed groups that believe they are stronger than the security forces,” Jassim said. He noted bluntly that some political parties maintain armed wings and suggested that foreign intelligence services were trying to intervene in Iraq’s affairs.

. . . On Friday, thousands of supporters of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched in central Baghdad against the agreement.

. . . The Sadr group, with 30 seats in the 275-strong parliament, has led opposition to the pact. Sadr has threatened to end a cease-fire he has imposed on his militia if the agreement passes.

Sad to say, threatening (even if it’s just a bluff) to unleash more sectarian violence via the Sadrists if the Sunnis don’t fall in line would be more in keeping with Maliki’s track record than making genuine political concessions.

CNN reports on today’s protest in Iraq against the SOFA agreement proposed by Prime Minister Maliki :

Iraqis outraged by a proposed security pact between Iraq and the United States staged an angry but peaceful protest against the deal Friday.

Thousands of people — most of whom are backers of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — streamed into Baghdad’s Firdous Square waving Iraqi flags, hoisting posters with portraits of the cleric and carrying signs scorning the agreement.

Protesters at one point set fire to U.S. flags and an effigy of President Bush, but the rally was well-organized and peaceful with no evidence of fighting or arrests. People dispersed amicably after the 2½-hour event.

Think about that.  In a country ruled by violence both before and after the U.S. invasion, a political faction held a massive demonstration in the capital against a key policy of the government… and then everyone went home peacefully.  Of course, that situation is by no means guaranteed to last, as the New York Times hints today in its coverage of the legislative debate over the agreement:

When cornered on the stairways and balconies of the Iraqi Parliament building in the Green Zone, many of those who are threatening to vote against ratification openly admit that they approve of its terms.

“To be clear, it is not the treaty that is the problem,” said Aala Maki, a senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni party that has suggested it might not vote for approval. “What will be built on the treaty, that is the problem.”

Other than the followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who reject any agreement in principle (and who continue to bang their hands on their desks in Parliament when it is being discussed), most lawmakers consider the pact at least satisfactory, if not ideal.

But the Sunnis, and others, are worried that the agreement will leave too much power to Mr. Maliki’s government, given that only two years ago elements of the government-run Iraqi police force were functionally little more than Shiite death squads.

The major Sunni parties, after several days of mixed messages, have largely come together and demanded a series of guarantees from the government and the Americans in return for their support. . . .

. . . Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker, said members of the Kurdish coalition were privately mulling whether to draw up their own list of demands.

“Everybody is afraid of Maliki,” Mr. Othman said. “Nobody is afraid of the agreement.”

Truth be told, this is the Sadrists’ real objection, too — since part of Maliki’s strongman ambitions is using the remaining U.S. presence to wear down their ability to oppose him (just as he’s done for the past year), even an orderly, gradual withdrawal is unsatisfactory to the Sadrists.  Thus they are forced to insist that a SOFA with a hard withdrawal deadline is in fact a puppet’s capitulation, that Obama is every bit the imperialist Bush/Cheney were, and so on.

For the moment, though, the debate is taking place in the political realm rather than on the streets, and that has to count as progress.  If Maliki has the sense and capacity to cut political deals with the Sunnis and Kurds to ensure broad support for the pact rather than steamroll it through by a narrow majority, that would be even more encouraging (though still transient).  We’ll know more on Monday, when the agreement is due to be voted on.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Update: Did I say Monday? Make that Wednesday or Thursday:

The speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud Mashhadani, said Saturday that he would call for a ratification vote as soon as the different blocs came to some kind of agreement, which he urged them to do by Wednesday or Thursday.

A press officer for Mr. Mashhadani said the speaker’s emphasis on arriving at an accord before the vote was directly related to recent statements by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric, who has insisted that any agreement achieve national consensus.

Supporters of the pact, largely consisting of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite bloc, and their Kurdish allies, appear to have enough votes for a majority, but they have grown frustrated in their attempts to persuade others to support the agreement. They said they believed that the ayatollah’s approval of the pact, which is considered critical, is contingent on more than token Sunni support.

. . . Late on Friday, Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, and Mr. Mashhadani invited members of Sunni parliamentary blocs to Mr. Talabani’s Baghdad home for discussions.

Some Sunni parliamentarians have asked that an appendix be added to the pact outlining their proposed guarantees. Since such an appendix is unlikely to be approved by the Americans, the Kurds countered with the idea of a treaty among Iraqi political blocs to ensure that the Sunnis’ demands are met after the pact is signed, said Abdul Khaliq Zangana, a Kurdish legislator who was at the meeting on Friday.

Will the Sunnis let themselves be fooled again persuaded to accept vague promises that Team Shiite has no intentions of keeping, or will they be able to pry some genuine concessions out of Maliki?  Stay tuned.

(Iraqis at a Baghdad cafe during a televised address by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on the proposed security agreement with the U.S., vIa the Associated Press and the New York Times.)

(NOTE:  I’ll have an actual post on this subject coming up one of these days…)

Given that it used to be the near-daily posting fare at this site, I suppose I should feel some guilt over not paying more attention to the latest twists and turns of internal Iraqi politics — specifically, the ongoing machinations regarding a possible status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States.

But how worked up should I get when so little actually changes?  For instance, when I last checked in on the surprising (to most observers) intransigence of the Iraqi government in the negotiations nearly two months ago, I wrote:

Isn’t that a classic haggling technique in any society?  Let the other side know you’re oh-so-close to a deal, encourage them to make a few concessions to close the gap… and just as they do and reach for the pen, pull back and say, “Wait, there’s one more thing you need to agree to.”

You’d almost think they’re having fun toying with the Bushites at this point.

Judging from news stories yesterday and today, that’s still where we are.

From the Associated Press today:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki dug in his heels Monday on the future of the U.S. military in Iraq, insisting that all foreign soldiers leave the country by a specific date in 2011 and rejecting legal immunity for American troops.

. . . Last week, U.S. and Iraqi officials said the two sides agreed tentatively to a schedule that includes a broad pullout of combat troops by the end of 2011 with the possibility that a residual U.S. force might stay behind to continue training and advising Iraqi security services.

But al-Maliki’s remarks indicated his government was not satisfied with that arrangement and wants all foreign troops gone by the end of 2011.

. . . President Bush has long resisted a timetable for removing troops from Iraq, even under strong pressure from an American public distressed by U.S. deaths and discouraged by the length of the war that began in 2003.

Last month, however, Bush reversed course and agreed to set a “general time horizon” for bringing troops home, based on Iraq’s ability to provide for its own security. But the Iraqis insisted they want a specific schedule.

“We find this to be too vague,” a close al-Maliki aide told The Associated Press on Monday. “We don’t want the phrase ‘time horizons.’ We are not comfortable with that phrase,” said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

Another top al-Maliki aide, also speaking on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said the Iraqi government had “stopped talking about the withdrawal of combat troops. We just talk about withdrawals,” including trainers and logistics troops.

The AP story carries a tone of partial disbelief that Maliki and his anonymous aides could actually mean what they say, suggesting on one hand that “al-Maliki is playing to a domestic audience” and “seeking to bolster his nationalist credentials ahead of provincial elections,” but also acknowledging (appropriately, in my opinion) that “The prime minister’s strong statements in support of an end to immunity and for a firm withdrawal timetable would make it difficult for him to accept an agreement that falls short of his public demands.”

I think the better analysis of what’s going on came from the AP’s Robert Reid in a story I analyzed here a month ago:

With the talks bogged down, the Iraqis sensed desperation by the Americans to wrap up a deal quickly before the presidential campaign was in full swing.

“Let’s squeeze them,” al-Maliki told his advisers, who related the conversation to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Maliki’s statements today, and the associated leaks from his advisers, seem like the “squeeze” is continuing — and I’m not surprised.  When I noticed the recent stream of news stories (nearly all driven by Iraqi government sources) claiming a troop agreement was near, I wondered when this other shoe would fall.

Isn’t that a classic haggling technique in any society?  Let the other side know you’re oh-so-close to a deal, encourage them to make a few concessions to close the gap… and just as they do and reach for the pen, pull back and say, “Wait, there’s one more thing you need to agree to.”

You’d almost think they’re having fun toying with the Bushites at this point.

To say the least, it’s been an interesting weekend for anyone following political developments involving the United States and Iraq. As if Barack Obama’s post-primaries trip to Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq wasn’t enough, we had Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki issuing a surprisingly explicit endorsement of Obama’s proposed timetable for withdrawing American combat troops:

Maliki: . . . U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain?

Maliki: Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic.

This was followed by pressure from the Bushites to issue an unconvincing denial, but Robert Reid of the Associated Press thinks he knows what’s really going on:

The Iraqi prime minister’s seeming endorsement of Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal plan is part of Baghdad’s strategy to play U.S. politics for the best deal possible over America’s military mission.

. . . Already, the Iraqi strategy has succeeded in persuading the White House to agree to a “general time horizon” for removing U.S. troops — long a goal of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.

. . . In the past, the Iraqis would have bowed to American pressure. This time, they saw an option in Obama, a longtime critic of the war. They could press for a short-term agreement with the administration and take their chances with a new president — Obama or McCain.

. . . “Let’s squeeze them,” al-Maliki told his advisers, who related the conversation to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Wow. It’s hard to imagine the words “Let’s squeeze them” coming from a weak puppet like Maliki — or, at least, the Maliki that’s frequently been portrayed not just in the media but on progressive blogs. As Abu Aardvark wrote today, “I know that I’m not the only one who has generally assumed that Maliki and most of the ruling elite preferred McCain’s vision of endless, unconditional American military support.”

Readers here are a fortunate exception, as I accurately picked up signs several weeks ago that the Iraqi government would “prefer to deal with someone sane Barack Obama rather than another Republican president reading from the neocon playbook,” and suggested that we “consider what more Iraqis might do to make their preferences known between now and November.”

I think that the key mistake many observers (perhaps including Abu Aardvark et al.) make is that there are only two sides to the Iraqi situation: the U.S. occupation and those who ally with it, and the “resistance” (Sunni, Sadrist, or whatever) that takes up arms against it. They forget that the government Maliki represents wasn’t created by the Americans — it came about following popular elections demanded by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who also established the coalition to which Maliki belongs and lent his considerable prestige to ensure its victory. And Sistani probably didn’t go through all that trouble just to be known as the guy who rubber-stamped a permanent U.S. occupation.

Back in Febuary 2004, Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post wrote a profile of Sistani that has long influenced my writings on Iraq; it describes the grand ayatollah as primarily motivated by memories of 1920 — when Shiites rebelled directly against the British, and were rewarded with 80 years of Sunni/secular domination — and determined not to let his followers miss this opportunity.

It’s always seemed to me that his solution was to cooperate initially with the U.S. invasion, use the American military as a contractor of sorts to help cement a Shiite-led government’s power, then nudge us aside when the task was more or less complete. Maliki’s newfound spine, if anything, just means that they think that time is drawing closer.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

(Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, demonstrating the “separation
of mosque and state” in Baghdad last weekend.)

Allow me to belatedly join the rest of the Iraq blogosphere in noting this development, in this case as reported by the Washington Post:

Iraq’s national security adviser said Tuesday that his government would not sign an agreement governing the future role of U.S. troops in Iraq unless it includes a timetable for their withdrawal.

The statement was the strongest demand yet by a senior Iraqi official for the two governments to set specific dates for the departure of U.S. forces. Speaking to reporters in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said his government was “impatiently waiting” for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops.

“There should not be any permanent bases in Iraq unless these bases are under Iraqi control,” Rubaie said, referring to negotiations over a bilateral agreement governing the future U.S. military role in Iraq. The agreement, if approved, would go into effect when a U.N. mandate expires in December.

“We would not accept any memorandum of understanding with [the U.S.] side that has no obvious and specific dates for the foreign troops’ withdrawal from Iraq,” Rubaie said.

Speaking of belated recognition, observers such as Eric Martin, Matt Duss, Kevin Drum, Spencer Ackerman, and Juan Cole all note the importance of Rubaie’s statement coming immediately after a meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. When the drumbeat of SOFA criticism began a month and a half ago, I think it was just yours truly who not only identified it but tied it to a similar conversation between Sistani and prime minister Maliki in Najaf.

The Associated Press version of this story includes an interesting tidbit:

Al-Maliki has instructed his negotiating team to harden its position in recent days because he thinks the Bush administration is eager to sign an agreement before the fall elections, giving Iraq the chance to win a better deal, said a senior Iraqi Shiite official knowledgeable about the talks.

An alternate take that I’ve promoted here is that Maliki & Co. would just as soon run out the clock on the Bushites and strike a deal with a hoped-for Obama administration next year, but playing carrot-and-stick with demands the Bush regime will find hard to accept may be one way of achieving that goal.

Conflicting with that interpretation, though, the AP reporters go on to outline a deal that Dick Cheney might find acceptable:

Ali al-Adeeb, a Shiite lawmaker and a prominent official in the prime minister’s party, told The Associated Press that Iraq was linking the proposed timeline to the ongoing return of various provinces to Iraqi control.

. . . The proposal, as outlined by al-Adeeb, is phrased in a way that would allow Iraqi officials to tell the Iraqi public that it includes a specific timeline for a U.S. withdrawal, with specific time periods mentioned.

However, it also would provide the United States some flexibility on timing because the dates of the provincial handovers are not set.

But then again, Alexandra Zavis of the Los Angeles Times had a chat of her own with a Maliki aide and reported yesterday:

Haider Abadi, a Dawa member and political insider, said Maliki did not believe Iraqis should be pressured into making long-term arrangements with an outgoing administration.

“No one can guess which way U.S. policy will go after the election,” he said in a telephone interview. “We cannot go on discussing an agreement that may never materialize. There is too much at stake.”

. . . Abadi said the government was proposing that the U.S. finish handing over responsibility for security in all 18 provinces within six months and pull out most of its troops in two to three years. Nine of the provinces are already under Iraqi control.

So I guess we’ll have to see which analysis is correct — that is, whether the Iraqis are trying to carve out the wiggle room imagined reported by the AP, or taking the tougher stand I’ve described.

Ultimately, it’s a question of which view of the Iraqi government is correct. The Bushites are spreading the word that Maliki, Rubaie, et al. are just trying to placate public opinion in Iraq, but when the crunch comes they’ll give Dubya what he wants because they need U.S. military protection to stay in power — and in fact, many on the left (including Attackerman and E-Mart, among many others) share this view.

However, I think they’ve got it the wrong way around. As the head of a government installed in large part though the will of Ayatollah Sistani (and against the wishes of the U.S. occupation), it’s part of Maliki’s job to placate the Bushites… but he has to obey Sistani. And if Sistani refuses to allow a deal that legitimizes the occupation indefinitely, then I don’t think there’s going to be one.

This story in the New York Times has already been widely noted across the blogiverse this morning:

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

The initial reaction can be summed up as varying shades of “Yep, this is the imperialism we were expecting.” And the response is certainly justifiable; favorable business deals under the shadow of imposing force are how “protection” rackets have functioned since the dawn of time.

An important caveat (noted by Andrew Tilghman at TPM Muckraker), though, appears midway through the NYT article:

The no-bid deals are structured as service contracts. The companies will be paid for their work, rather than offered a license to the oil deposits. As such, they do not require the passage of an oil law setting out terms for competitive bidding. The legislation has been stalled by disputes among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties over revenue sharing and other conditions.

A service contract approach, rather than so-called production sharing agreements (PSAs) that would give foreign companies a share of the oil itself, is exactly how liberals have called for Iraq to handle its resource development. With no PSAs, and no much-desired (by the Bushites) oil law to support a more rapacious generous approach to Western involvement in Iraq’s fields, these contracts could be seen as a bone thrown by the Shiite government in Baghdad to placate the U.S. for a few months until Barack Obama a new administration comes to Washington, DC.

This may especially be the case when one considers the resistance by the Maliki government to approving a long-term security agreement that would prolong the occupation. Given the hints of hardball tactics by Bush/Cheney et al. to get their way, a few small oil contracts could be an attempt by Maliki & Co. to ease the pressure. As the bards sang forty years ago:

If you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I’ll lay your soul to waste…

In other words, a little token favor in the face of unrestrained vice might be excused as a necessary evil. We’ll have to see what next steps follow these contracts (particularly in terms of the so-called Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA) to determine whether the Iraqi government is in fact trying to buy time from the devils they’re forced to deal with, or whether they’ve joined the latter as full partners in crime.