US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)

Summary: At the end of November 2008, the Iraqi parliament ratified a status of forces agreement (SOFA) with the United States, laying out a timetable for the complete withdrawal of American forces (December 31, 2011) and imposing new restrictions on US military operations. The agreement, effective January 1, 2009, provided a legal basis for the continued presence of American troops in Iraq after the United Nations mandate expiration on December 31, 2008. Negotiations had begun in March 2008 on the terms under which US forces would stay in Iraq; by the end, the Iraqi government hailed the agreement as setting the terms and timetable for their departure. In the interim, the agreement called for the complete withdrawal of combat troops from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and for advance consultation with the Iraqi government on American military operations. Most factions of Iraqi politicians supported the agreement in parliament (it passed by a vote of 149 in favor, thirty-five against, with fourteen members not voting). Iraqis loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr opposed the agreement because it did not call for the immediate and complete withdrawal of US troops.

In March 2008, the United States and the government of Iraq began negotiating a status of forces agreement (SOFA) to serve as the legal basis for—and to define the specific terms of—the continued presence of US troops in Iraq after December 31, 2008. The agreement was meant to succeed the legal basis for the US troop presence provided by a succession of United Nations Security Council resolutions, the last of which expired on December 31, 2008. The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Malaki had asked the Security Council not to extend the authorization beyond that date.

The main terms of the SOFA approved by the Iraqi parliament included:

  • All US troops must withdraw from Iraq by December 31, 2011.
  • All US combat troops must withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 31, 2009.
  • The United States must consult with the Iraqi government before future military operations. The agreement established a Joint Military Operations Coordination Committee, comprised of Americans and Iraqis, for consultations on future operations.
  • The United States was barred from launching attacks on a third country from Iraqi territory.
  • American troops were restricted from invading homes and/or detaining Iraqi citizens.
  • American troops accused of serious crimes committed while off duty and base would fall under the jurisdiction of Iraqi courts. (The US military retained the power to determine when soldiers were off duty.) Some US civilian military contractors were also brought under Iraqi legal jurisdiction.
  • Control of Iraqi air space was turned over to the Iraqi government immediately, for the first time since the American invasion in March 2003.

The agreement provided for future negotiations for modifications, notably of the 2011 withdrawal deadline.

Separately, the Iraqi parliament called for a national referendum on the agreement in June 2009. Observers noted that legislative calls for referenda on other issues had been ignored.

The SOFA was accompanied by a second document laying out a broader framework for cooperation between the United States and Iraq in politics, economics, and cultural exchanges.

During the nine months the SOFA was under negotiation, the document morphed from a rationale for the continued American military presence in Iraq into terms of an eventual complete American withdrawal. After the Iraqi parliament approved the agreement on November 28, 2008, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said the agreement "represents the first step on the road to regain national sovereignty."

The SOFA played a role in the domestic politics of Iraq and the United States and the region's larger strategic balance.

Iraqi Politics. The Maliki government took a hard line on initial American suggestions for a deliberately vague withdrawal deadline and on its demands for greater Iraqi control over American troops in the country. Maliki was operating in the context of widespread dissatisfaction with the presence of US troops and in the shadow of Iraqi regional and national elections to be held in 2009. After terms of the agreement were hammered out between Baghdad and Washington, Maliki then lobbied hard in parliament for approval of the agreement; parliamentary debates were heated and sometimes chaotic, as competing factions—especially Sunnis—demanded concessions in exchange for their support of the agreement. One result of this debate was a condition that the agreement's final approval be subject to a national referendum in June 2009. Players outside the government also had a critical role in approving the SOFA, notably Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who demanded that the agreement have the support of all parties, and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters demonstrated against the agreement until the very end. The initial consensus of most analysts was that the SOFA represented a victory for Maliki, who could claim to have negotiated an end to the American occupation, as well as gaining the support of the main Sunni bloc in parliament alongside his Shiite bloc and the Kurds.

American Politics. The agreement was negotiated during the US presidential election, in which Democrat Barack Obama insisted on a firm deadline for US withdrawal within sixteen months of his taking office, and Republican John McCain insisted there could be no firm deadline for withdrawal before victory had been achieved. The administration of President George W. Bush had initially resisted a firm withdrawal deadline. During the negotiations, the number of insurgent attacks declined steadily, the result of a combination of the 2007 US troop "surge," a ceasefire by the Shiite militia of al-Sadr, and the spread of the Awakening movement among Sunni leaders who recruited young men to combat Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Upon signing the agreement, President Bush said, "Two years ago, this day seemed unlikely, but the success of the surge and the courage of the Iraqi people set the conditions for these two agreements to be negotiated and approved by the Iraqi parliament."

Regional Politics. Iran was widely viewed as a silent party in the negotiations, applying pressure via its Shiite allies in Baghdad (notably Moqtada al-Sadr and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) to demand an early American withdrawal. The SOFA's ban on launching attacks on third countries from Iraqi territory, in particular, was aimed at Iran and Syria, especially after the disclosure that the United States had sent commandos into Syrian territory in September 2008 in search of an insurgent leader. As a measure of Iran's influence over the agreement, in October 2008, the speaker of the Iraqi parliament visited Tehran to solicit Iranian views. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued a statement calling on the Iraqi government to resist US pressure to reach an agreement allowing a continued presence of American troops in Iraq. But after parliament voted in favor of the SOFA, another senior Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati of the conservative Guardian Council, said after the parliamentary vote, "This was a very good decision by the Iraqi parliament."

Second Agreement. Alongside the SOFA, Iraq and the United States completed a "strategic framework agreement" incorporating a declaration of principles signed in November 2007 by Maliki and Bush. It covers issues such as the US's role in defending Iraq's government from internal and external threats, the US's role in combating terrorists, and the US's role in supporting internal Iraqi reconciliation.

Order 17. In the months after the US invasion in March 2003, Iraq was governed by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), led by Paul Bremer. In June 2004, shortly before handing over authority to an Iraqi government, Bremer issued Order 17, exempting non-Iraqi military and non-military personnel from Iraqi law and courts. Order 17, although it was highly controversial inside Iraq, was not repealed by the government of Iraq after the dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority in June 2004. The order continued to govern the status of American military and civilian personnel in Iraq.

The status of Order 17—and its effective immunization of US military and civilian personnel from Iraqi laws and courts—after the expiration of the final UN mandate at the end of 2008 was not made explicit. The effort to negotiate a SOFA between the US and Iraq was partially designed to eliminate this ambiguity.

Context: Other Status of Forces Agreement. The United States maintains dozens of SOFAs with nations where US forces have been stationed since the end of World War II. Some of these agreements are public, others are classified. Bush administration spokesmen provided slightly different numbers in discussing SOFAS in effect, ranging from eighty (US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker in Congressional testimony in April 2008) to "more than 115" (the estimate provided by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates in a February 2008 op-ed in the Washington Post). Known agreements range from three pages (with East Timor, negotiated in 2002) to over 150 pages (with South Korea, negotiated in 1966). In addition to signaling the consent of these nations to an American military presence, one key purpose of SOFAs is to protect American military personnel from the jurisdiction of foreign courts and the prospect of imprisonment in foreign jails. Virtually all SOFA agreements place American military personnel under US jurisdiction. In some cases, notably on Okinawa, the behavior of American troops in encounters with native civilians and perceived shortcomings in American military justice have been the source of friction.

Bibliography

"US-Iraq Strategic Framework and Status of Forces Agreement: Congressional Response: RL34568." Congressional Research Service: Report, 11 July 2008, p. 26. search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=33185112&site=isc-live

"Status of Forces Agreement: The Republic of Iraq and the United States of America." Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), 2009, www.dcaf.ch/sites/default/files/publications/documents/US-Iraqi‗SOFA-en.pdf. Accessed 5 Oct. 2023.

Mason, R. Chuck. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA): What Is It, and How Might One Be Utilized In Iraq?: RL34531." Congressional Research Service: Report, 16 June 2008, p. 35. search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=32817691&site=isc-live