BAGHDAD, Nov 9, (Agencies): The US military has handed over to the Iraqi government its 2nd largest Iraq base, a joint army and air force complex that housed some 36,000 American troops and contractors at the peak of the war, US officials said.
Joint Base Balad was returned to Iraqi control on Tuesday with the departure of the last members of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing as the United States continued the withdrawal of all forces from Iraq by year end.
About 30,000 troops remain in the country, which the United States invaded in 2003. Washington has announced that it will withdraw all its troops by the end of this year after failing to agree with Baghdad on a plan to keep a scaled-down presence.
Before the war, Balad, located north of Baghdad, was known as al-Bakr Air Base after Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Iraq’s president before Saddam Hussein. US forces captured it in April 2003, renaming it Camp Anaconda and later Joint Base Balad.
Logistics
Its two 11,000 foot runways made Balad the major logistics centre for US forces in Iraq after the invasion that toppled Saddam, and one of the busiest airports in the world.
“In 2006 Balad had 27,500 takeoffs and landings per month, second only to Heathrow airport in London,” said Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Brooks, a US military historian.
Balad’s peak population made it second in size only to Victory Base, the US war command centre in Baghdad that will be returned to Iraqi control in December.
Balad took so much mortar fire soldiers began calling it “Mortaritaville,” a play on the song “Margaritaville” by American singer Jimmy Buffett.
Brooks said it housed the most sophisticated medical facility in Iraq, which boasted a 98 percent survival rate for the wounded taken there for treatment.
“If you made it to Balad alive, you were going to leave Balad alive,” he said.
From a peak of 505 bases in Iraq, US forces have 11 left.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s prime minister on Wednesday called on members of Saddam Hussein’s now-dissolved Baath party to declare their rejection of the party in writing, and threatened prosecution if they do not.
Nuri al-Maliki called on Baath members to “announce their repentance and innocence” and to sign a document to that effect “in front of the relevant state agencies,” in a speech in the central Shiite shrine city Karbala.
“If not, they are subject to ... legal prosecution,” he said.
The remarks are just the latest part of the premier’s anti-Baath drive.
Maliki announced in late October that 615 people had been arrested in a country-wide sweep of alleged Baathists, whom he said were targeting “state security and stability.”
Arrests in Sunni-majority Salaheddin province prompted its provincial council to vote for administrative and financial autonomy, sparking a furious reaction from Maliki, who said the province would not be permitted to become a “refuge for Baathists.”
According to Article 119 of the Iraqi constitution, “one or more governorates (provinces) shall have the right to organise into a region based on a request to be voted on in a referendum.”
Thus, Salaheddin will not become autonomous unless the province’s residents vote for that option in a referendum.
But if Maliki has his way, the Kurdistan region of north Iraq, which is made up of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah provinces, will remain the country’s only autonomous region, at least for the time being.
“Choosing the moment is important. This is not the moment for federalism,” Maliki said in his Wednesday remarks.
“It should be during stability and quiet and national unity,” he said, adding that “it will be a disaster” if there are new federal regions now, and it “will not be to the benefit of any province if they go in this direction.”