Doug Lorimer
US President George Bush's "broad coalition" of countries participating in the US-led "multinational force" (MNF) occupying Iraq is steadily shrinking. Since Spain's pull-out of its 1300 troops last April, a dozen other countries have withdrawn, or announced that they will be withdrawing their troop contingents from Iraq.
The list of countries with troops in the MNF — available at — was last updated in October, and totalled 29 countries, six less than when the MNF was first established last year.
The February 26 Washington Post reported that "Portugal quietly pulled out its 150 soldiers this month. Next month, the Netherlands will begin withdrawing its 1700 troops, one of the largest contingents. And Ukraine's new government has signaled plans for a phased pullout of its 1600 soldiers."
On March 2, newly elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko announced that all of his country's troops in Iraq would be withdrawn in three stages between mid-March and mid-October.
Ukraine's previous president, Leonid Kuchma, widely portrayed in the Western corporate media as heading a pro-Moscow, anti-US regime, had deployed troops to Iraq "to mend fences with Washington, which accused him of approving a sale of military equipment to Saddam Hussein's regime despite an international embargo", Agence France Presse reported.
Yushchenko, portrayed by the Western corporate media as being pro-US, had made the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Iraq a key part of his successful election campaign against Kuchma.
"Ukraine's decision is a further headache for Washington, with Poland already having decided to pull out a third of its 2400 soldiers from the war-torn country because of strong domestic opposition to the deployment", the AFP reported.
Poland announced in early February that it would withdraw 700 troops from Iraq by the end of the month. Furthermore, Polish defence minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski stated on February 3 that his country will pull all its troops out of Iraq by the end of this year if the UN Security Council does not approve any more resolutions authorising foreign troops to be there as part of the US-led MNF.
Echoing the spin coming from the White House, the February 26 Washington Post reported that the US "is planning increasingly to shift the duties of foreign troops in Iraq from providing security to training Iraq's new army and police to prevent more countries from abandoning the international coalition there and possibly lure others back".
The Bush administration and the Western corporate media has hailed the February decision by all 26 members of the US-led NATO alliance to contribute military personnel to help train Washington's puppet Iraqi security forces as evidence of continued international support for the US war in Iraq.
A February 22 Associated Press report from the NATO headquarters in Brussels stated: "All 26 nations of the NATO alliance decided Tuesday that they will work together to help train Iraq's military — a decision designed to symbolize the end to the bitter divisions wrought by the Iraq war."
However, the AP report also stated that "NATO has been struggling for months to get a commitment from all allies to join the Iraqi training mission", largely because of opposition from France and Germany.
According to AP, "Officials said they now had enough resources to increase the mission to include 160 instructors... The mission inside Iraq currently comprises about 110 instructors training senior Iraqi officers in Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone. Over half the NATO instructors are American."
Thus, the NATO decision will only add an extra 50 instructors.
AP reported that "French President Jacques Chirac confirmed France will participate in the NATO mission. But [French] officials said that would be limited to one officer working at NATO headquarters in Belgium."
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, March 9, 2005.
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