The US Military Presence.

One of the first orders of business for the new government under Ja'fari will be to strike a deal over the terms and conditions of the 150,000-troop-strong US military presence. A UN Security Council resolution authorising the occupation ends in December. After that, the occupation will be technically illegal. Chris Toensing of the Washington-based Middle East Research and Information Project on April 6 said the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), which won the most votes in the Jan. 30 polls, has already abandoned its election promise to demand a timeline for US withdrawal. "Right now, the United States is the protector of the United Iraqi Alliance", Toensing said, noting the US military had promised to protect whatever government was elected.

On Capitol Hill, the Senate Appropriations Committee has just considered adding $80 bn more for US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the total emergency monies for the two wars to $210 bn. "That's the structure", Toensing said, adding: "Now the big danger is that relationship will become entrenched even though the Iraqi side will not be really happy with it, but they will perceive that they will have no other choice if they want to stay in power". Toensing expects the US military to become tightly linked to both the armed wings of Shiite religious parties and Kurdish peshmerga under the new government, since both support large-scale crackdowns on the Sunni insurgency, taking more prisoners and secretly locking them up in prisons like Abu Ghraib with minimal oversight.