Leaked Arabic version SOFA agreement

Leaked by Awan, twenty pages of the last U.S. — Iraq SOFA agree­ment draft, no time to trans­late the whole doc­u­ment, I will try and do my best to high­light some impor­tant points.

The right side text of the doc­u­ment is the agree­ment as sug­gested by the Amer­i­can side, left-side text the Iraqi gov­ern­ment remarks and cor­rec­tions, far left is the U.S. ambas­sador remarks.

The fol­low­ing colour-codes were used in the doc­u­ment [in some parts the Iraqi remarks asked to remove the green lines, so the colour-codes are not accu­rate]:

Green: Gen­er­ally accepted and agreed upon.

Yel­low: Not agreed upon yet.

Red: Major differences.

As the news­pa­per pointed out, the U.S. guar­an­tees of not using the Iraqi soil [mil­i­tary bases] to attack neigh­bor­ing coun­tries are not included.

Field and Purpose

This agree­ment iden­ti­fies the rules and the basic pro­vi­sions that orga­nize the pres­ence of the U.S. forces in Iraq, and the agreed upon activ­i­ties of these forces in Iraq.

Also, it iden­ti­fies the rules and the basic pro­vi­sions of cer­tain sit­u­a­tions explained in this agree­ment, of con­trac­tors and employ­ees work­ing for the U.S. on the Iraqi soil.

These activ­i­ties agreed upon includes: Oper­a­tions and train­ings, tran­sit, sup­port and related activ­i­ties, Aer­ial refu­el­ing, main­te­nance of vehi­cles, ships and air­planes, pro­vid­ing suit­able res­i­dents for the employ­ees and their work-places, mobi­liz­ing forces and mate­ri­als stor­age, and other goals and activ­i­ties will be agreed upon.

The desire of the U.S. and Iraq that these autho­riza­tions in the attach­ments to be tem­po­rary. Both sides decide that this agree­ment and the attach­ments included will sup­port the exis­tence of secu­rity and defense rela­tion between them after the end of the tran­si­tional period in Iraq and peace will exists with it. This will not include the attach­ments with the agreement.

Remark

- Post­poned for now ’till later development.

- Green colour lines to be removed.

- Adding a point explains the pur­pose of the agree­ment, and pre­vents [mil­i­tary] oper­a­tion out­side the borders.

One point is very interesting:

Detained mem­bers of the [Amer­i­can] forces and civil­ian ele­ments [con­trac­tors, employ­ees] arrested by the Iraqi forces to be deliv­ered to the Amer­i­can forces.

Remark

[long remark, but this is the impor­tant part] The Iraqi gov­ern­ment autho­rizes the civilian-elements to use force against oth­ers in case of self-defense. As results, there will be no issue of juridi­cal prosecutions.

Another point, Iraqi nego­tia­tor asked to be removed is the following:

Both sides agree that Iraq will not invite a third coun­try or an inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion for logistic-support, train­ing or sup­port the Iraqi secu­rity forces.

Remark

This para­graph to be removed

One more, the Iraqi side demands to add this point, the Amer­i­can ambas­sador added his com­ment also.

Both sides seek reg­u­lar con­sul­ta­tion, on the polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary level to dis­cus defense and secu­rity coop­er­a­tion. These dis­cus­sions can include these issues:

Develop the Iraqi capa­bil­i­ties to secure it’s own bor­ders. Train­ing, sup­ply­ing, estab­lish­ment and devel­op­ing the logis­tic and the admin­is­tra­tion of the Iraqi secu­rity forces infrastructures.

Strength­en­ing the joint effort of these forces, to improve the mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion and joint train­ing, exchange exper­tise and aca­d­e­mics, exchange infor­ma­tion and other mil­i­tary activities.

Remark

Green line to be removed, and change to “will consult”, …

Amer­i­can ambas­sador comment

This exec­u­tive agree­ment is under the president’s autho­riza­tion, any pledge involves using forces and spend­ing Amer­i­can money requires an agree­ment autho­rized by the con­gress. In the cur­rent U.S. inter­nal polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, the con­gress unlikely will agree with this, but the exec­u­tive agree­ment will estab­lish a suit­able sit­u­a­tion that can be devel­oped in the future.

Notice that the first para­graph does not apply on the ground, the agree­ment must be signed signed between coun­tries with equal sov­er­eign­ties and this si not the case in of the rela­tion­ship between Iraq and U.S., and this is an agree­ment between and occu­pied coun­try and an occu­pa­tion power. The agree­ment terms will be dic­tated by force if necessary.

Also, notice the part where the U.S. ambas­sador try­ing to pre­vent the autho­riza­tion of the Amer­i­can con­gress, there is no men­tion of the autho­riza­tion of the Iraqi par­lia­ment in the document.