A year ago, Forward Operating Base Callahan in northern Baghdad was one of the key U.S. military nerve centers in the battered capital. Hundreds of soldiers slept in crowded rooms. Humvees zipped in and out the gate around the clock to keep a vast network of inner-city outposts humming.
On Christmas Eve, the few soldiers still there spent the day packing, emptying rooms and carting out boxes. Bulletin boards are bare. The dumbbells and workout equipment have been schlepped away.
Less than a week before the new year, which will usher in a largely undefined era for U.S. troops in Iraq, the military is preparing to hand over Callahan to the Iraqi government. It will be the first major base in Baghdad to be returned. The government has demanded that U.S. combat troops pull out of Iraqi cities by next summer.
The U.S. military plans to shut down by then five of the 13 large bases it operates in the capital, as well as the 15 combat outposts there that are occupied solely by U.S. troops.
Thousands of U.S. soldiers will remain based at joint security stations — outposts they share with Iraqi Army or police units — for the foreseeable future.
"On Jan. 1, our mission doesn't change," Brig. Gen. Robin Swan, a commander in the division responsible for Baghdad, said Wednesday during a visit to Callahan. Protecting the population remains the top mission, he said. "How we execute that mission is going to have adjustments."
For years, the U.N. resolution that is to be replaced Jan. 1 by a status-of-forces agreement between Iraq and the United States has given American forces vast power here. As the U.S. military starts shrinking its footprint in Baghdad and other key Iraqi cities, several questions remain about how the new arrangement will play out.
Starting next year, U.S. soldiers will no longer have the right to detain Iraqis without warrants issued by Iraqi judges, and they must turn over detainees to Iraqi authorities within hours.
Committees that will set guidelines on central issues, such as how combat operations are to be carried out and the instances when U.S. soldiers could be prosecuted under Iraqi law, have not been appointed.
"The Iraqis are still forming their committees," Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said this week.
The committee that will oversee the handover of control over security matters in the Green Zone to the Iraqi government was formed recently and does not yet have a final plan.
The transition comes at a time of growing concern about an uptick in violence. In the heavily fortified Green Zone, which will come under Iraqi control as of Jan. 1, U.S. diplomats spent Christmas Eve on virtual lockdown as authorities investigated reports that car bombs had been smuggled inside, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
Tensions over provincial elections scheduled to take place Jan. 31 have triggered violence that U.S. and Iraqi officials fear could worsen in the weeks ahead. On Wednesday morning, a leading candidate in Anbar province was targeted in a bombing at his house that killed three of his children. The politician, Ahmed al-Rashid, a member of the Awakening Councils, U.S.-backed groups that include many former insurgents, said he was not surprised.
"The election is not so far off," he said. "Competition will start between the rivals, and the bombs might be stronger before the elections."
The future also remains uncertain for the Sons of Iraq groups, units of former insurgents who became armed guards and were put on the U.S. payroll. The Iraqi government took control of the groups and began paying them two months ago. U.S. commanders say the transition has been smooth, but so far it has been unfolding under the close supervision of U.S. troops.
Nevertheless, Swan said, a less visible American imprint in the capital is long overdue.
Last month, he said, U.S. soldiers stopped conducting operations in which they did not partner with Iraqi security forces. And in recent weeks, commanders in Baghdad have taken steps to make the American military presence less conspicuous and obtrusive. For example, logistical and other routine missions are being carried out at night to ease traffic, and helicopter routes are being adjusted where possible to avoid densely populated areas.
"That is a visible sign that things are changing," Swan said.
Special correspondent Qais Mizher contributed to this report.
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