Even as the U.S. presence is on the verge of receding in Iraq, America needs to stay engaged with that key Middle Eastern nation, two international experts said in Richmond on Wednesday.

“Iraq could be a positive force in the region,” said former Iraqi defense official Nazar Janabi.But, Janabi said, “that will require some strategic patience” on the part of America.

Beyond that, said former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq David G. Newton,”America has an obligation to leave a viable [Iraqi] government behind.”

Besides, Newton said, “We do not want to have to go back there a third time.”

Janabi is now with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Newton is with the Middle East Institute in Washington.

The two spoke to about 150 people at a World Affairs Council of Greater Richmond program at the Omni Richmond Hotel on Wednesday night.

Continued engagement with Iraq is important because that country has about 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, and sits in the middle of one of the world’s most volatile regions, Janabi said.

“It could be come a terrorist safe haven and the scene of future regional wars,” he said, “or it could become a stable and prosperous U.S. ally.”

And the U.S. has a moral obligation to the Iraqis to help repair the damage of the war, Newton said.

“What matters now is not how U.S. presence in Iraq started,” Janabi said, “but how it will change in the next four years.”

America’s infusion of troops into Iraq last year — the “surge” — has reduced violence and that “makes other things possible” to help build a stable society there, Newton said.

Though he decried the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, “we can now have more hope,”

Newton said. “You can talk about success, if you define it carefully.”

Still, the retired diplomat said, “the progress made in Iraq is fragile.” Violence could easily flare up again.

The challenge facing the United States, Janabi said, is to prevent the emergence of authoritarian regimes — civilian or military — again in Iraq.

“It can do this by ensuring free and fair elections in Iraq in 2009, in the hope that this leads to the emergence of countervailing centers of power to check that of the central government,” the Iraqi analyst said, “and by maintaining a residual presence in Iraq beyond 2011 to deter the military from undertaking a coup.”

Janabi served from 2004 to 2006 as director general for defense policy and requirements in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. He now focuses on Iraqi and Middle Eastern security issues and democratization in the region.
Newton served as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 1984 to 1988 and as ambassador to Yemen from 1994 to 1997.