The surge

Prior to the release of the Iraq Study Group report, there had been considerable debate within the administration over the path forward in Iraq. Although by December 2006 President Bush had indicated his inclination to increase the number of troops in Iraq, questions—in particular, the exact number of troops to be added—remained unsettled. Finally, in January 2007, President Bush announced a controversial plan to temporarily increase the number of U.S. troops there by more than 20,000, an effort that became known as the surge. Despite heavy casualties initially—2007 was the deadliest year for U.S. forces since 2004—the drop in violence that occurred as the year drew on was a source of encouragement, and a number of the additional troops were subsequently withdrawn. The ultimate success of the surge itself remained a source of continuing debate, however, as the declining levels of violence observed in 2007 were attributed not solely to the surge itself but to a confluence of factors. Among these were a change in tactics that brought U.S. forces already on the ground more in line with classic counterinsurgency strategy; the Sunni Awakening, a movement in which Sunni tribesmen who had formerly fought against U.S. troops eventually realigned themselves to help counter other insurgents, particularly those affiliated with al-Qaeda; and the voluntary peace observed by Ṣadr and his forces beginning in August of that year.

In November 2008 the Iraqi parliament approved a U.S.-Iraqi agreement that redefined the legal framework for U.S. military activity in Iraq and set a timetable for the final withdrawal of U.S. forces. Under the agreement, which was signed during the final months of the Bush administration after nearly a year of negotiation, U.S. troops were scheduled to leave the cities by mid-2009, and withdrawal from the country was set to be completed by December 31, 2011. In February 2009 newly elected U.S. Pres. Barack Obama announced that U.S. combat forces would be withdrawn from Iraq by August 31, 2010, with the remaining troops due to pull out by the end of 2011. On August 18, 2010—two weeks ahead of schedule—the last combat brigade withdrew from Iraq; 50,000 U.S. soldiers remained in Iraq to act as a transitional force.

In contrast to publicly known U.S. military casualty figures (tracked by the Pentagon to more than 4,300 in October 2009), for a number of years no comprehensive data on Iraqi mortality was made available by the Iraqi government. In October 2009 the Iraqi government released its estimate of violent deaths for the 2004–08 period (statistics for the earliest portion of the war were far more difficult to obtain, due to the lack of a functioning government at that time). According to the government estimate, more than 85,000 Iraqis—a figure that included both civilians and military personnel—had died violently in the four-year period.

In October 2010 the whistle-blowing organization WikiLeaks published nearly 400,000 secret U.S. military documents from the Iraq War online under the title “Iraq War Log,” following the release of a similar cache of documents related to the Afghanistan War in July 2010. WikiLeaks made the documents available to several major news outlets, including The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera ahead of the publication date, stipulating that the material had to remain under embargo until the online release. The documents, mostly raw tactical and intelligence reports generated by field units in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, did not radically change the public understanding of the war, but they did reveal detailed information about its day-to-day conduct. They indicated that U.S. forces kept more detailed counts of Iraqi civilian casualties than previously acknowledged and that these counts indicated higher rates of civilian casualties than the military’s public statements, that private military contractors were often involved in incidents of excessive force, that Iran provided extensive direct military aid to Shiʿi militias participating in Iraq’s sectarian conflict, and that U.S. forces ignored the widespread use of torture by Iraqi security forces. U.S. and Iraqi officials condemned the publication of the documents, saying that the release would set back security efforts and endanger the lives of military personnel and Iraqis who cooperated with the military.

In July 2011, U.S. military officials announced that Iraq and the United States had begun negotiations to keep several thousand U.S. soldiers in Iraq past December 31, 2011, the date for withdrawal set in negotiations in 2008. However, a possible extension of the U.S. presence in Iraq remained unpopular with the Iraq public and with several Iraqi political factions. Negotiations failed when the two sides were unable to reach an agreement over the continuation for U.S. troops of legal immunity from Iraqi law. In October, President Obama announced that the remaining 39,000 soldiers would leave the country at the end of 2011. The U.S. military formally declared the end of its mission in Iraq in a ceremony in Baghdad on December 15, as the final U.S. troops prepared to withdraw from the country.

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