http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/iraq/?id=16600
US hopes of Iraq troop withdrawals fading


Pentagon admits weekly attacks, casualties and sectarian violence are on the rise in war-torn Iraq.


By Peter Mackler - WASHINGTON

The Pentagon's announcement Tuesday it had dispatched 1,500 reinforcements to Iraq was only the latest indication that US hopes for a major troop drawdown this year were fading fast.

US military officials said two armored battalions had been ordered in from Kuwait to back up US and Iraqi forces battling to tame the western Al-Anbar province, a bastion of Iraq's insurgency.

Spokesmen described the move as part of the ebb and flow of forces needed to tackle the insurgents more than three years after the US-led invasion to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

But the addition of fresh personnel followed months of efforts by US President George W. Bush's administration to persuade an increasingly restive American public that at least some US troops might be coming home.

Military planners, buoyed by what they called progress in rebuilding Iraqi security forces, had hoped to reduce US troop levels from the current 130,000 to 100,000 by the end of 2006.

"I think it's entirely probable that we will see a significant drawdown of American forces over the next year," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a round of television interviews two months ago.

But such optimistic forecasts have been muted in recent weeks as the insurgency raged unabated and escalating sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims heralded all-out civil war.

Bush and his chief wartime ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, refused last week to set any timetable for the withdrawal of their troops even with formation of a new Iraqi government.

At a joint news conference after talks at the White House, both leaders reiterated their familiar stand that any troop cuts would depend on conditions on the ground and not on political considerations.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was even hazier. He told CNN that the exit date for US troops "depends on so many variables that nobody can know the answer to."

The continuing violence in Iraq has put Bush and his Republican Party in a political bind six months before congressional elections that are expected to turn largely on feelings about the war.

With the US death toll approaching 2,500, polls show that three of five Americans now think the invasion was not worth it. Bush's percentage approval rating has plunged to the low 30s.

But the administration is still searching for the combination of circumstances to allow it to extricate itself from Iraq.

The Pentagon said Tuesday in its quarterly progress report to Congress that if gains had been made in developing Iraq's security forces, weekly attacks, casualties and sectarian violence were also on the rise.

The size of the Iraqi force has grown to 263,400, the report said, and 71 battalions were now capable of leading counter-insurgency operations, up from 53 three months ago.

But Pentagon officials would not specify how many Iraqi battalions were capable of operating fully independently of coalition forces. The last survey put the number at zero.

With the United States facing continued bloodshed if it stayed in Iraq and chaos if it pulled out, there was little consensus among Americans what to do about troop levels.

Democratic Congressman John Murtha on Tuesday kept up his call for an immediate withdrawal, especially with damaging reports coming to light of a possible US massacre of civilians in the town of Haditha.

"We've already lost the hearts and minds of Iraqis," Murtha, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, told CNN. "It's time for us to redeploy, get our troops out in the middle of a civil war."

But other Iraqi watchers such as Max Boot, senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, felt more US troops, not less, were needed.

"Unless the administration rethinks its dogmatic aversion to more boots on the ground, the new Iraqi government will be hard put to protect its people," Boot wrote last week in the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/stor...5855662,00.html

Pentagon: Iraq Insurgency Steady Until '07

Wednesday May 31, 2006 1:01 AM


WASHINGTON (AP) - The Sunni Arab heart of the Iraqi insurgency seems likely to hold its strength the rest of the year, and some of its leaders are now collaborating with al-Qaida terrorists, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

In a report assessing the situation in Iraq, required quarterly by Congress, the Pentagon painted a mixed picture on a day when the U.S. military command in Baghdad said 1,500 more combat troops have arrived in the country. The extra troops are part of an intensified effort to wrest control of the provincial capital of Ramadi from insurgents.

The report to Congress offered a relatively dim picture of economic progress, with few gains in improving basic services like electricity, and it provided no promises of U.S. troop reductions anytime soon.

On the other hand, it said the Iraqi army is gaining strength and taking lead responsibility for security in more areas.

The U.S. government has struggled for three years to understand the shadowy insurgency in Iraq, which began in the Sunni Triangle west and north of Baghdad. In Tuesday's report, the Pentagon said the ``rejectionists'' who are a key element of the insurgency are holding their own against U.S. and Iraqi forces.

``MNF-I expects that rejectionist strength will likely remain steady throughout 2006, but that their appeal and motivation for continued violent action will begin to wane in early 2007,'' the report said. The term MNF-I refers to the Multinational Force-Iraq, the top American military command in Baghdad.

It also said for the first time that the Sunnis who reject the U.S.-based government are collaborating with al-Qaida.

``Some hardline Sunni rejectionists have joined al-Qaida in Iraq in recent months, increasing the terrorists' attack options,'' the report said.

It said a separate element of the insurgency that U.S. officials describe as former loyalists of the Saddam Hussein regime remains an important enabler of the violence in Iraq. But the Saddam loyalists have ``mostly splintered'' into other groups. As a result, they are now ``largely irrelevant'' as a threat to the fledgling Iraqi government, said Lt. Gen. Victor E. Renuart, the head of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who helped prepare the report.

The report also said that while security in much of Iraq has improved, total attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces have increased in recent months, following the Feb. 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

President Bush said he remained hopeful that the new Iraqi government will succeed in stabilizing the country.

``Although there's been some very difficult times for the Iraqi people, I'm impressed by the courage of the leadership, impressed by the determination of the people,'' Bush said Tuesday in the Oval Office during the credentialing ceremony for Samir Sumaidaie, Iraq's ambassador to the United States.

The troop move announced Tuesday involves about 1,500 soldiers from an armored brigade on standby in Kuwait and reflects a deteriorating security situation in the volatile provincial capital of Ramadi. It raises the number of U.S. military brigades in Iraq from 15 to 16 - just five months after the number was cut from 17 to 15. A brigade has at least 3,500 troops.

The administration is under election-year pressure to demonstrate concrete progress in Iraq and to begin reducing U.S. troop levels at a time when the Army and Marines in particular are stretched thin by war deployments.

Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq watcher with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Tuesday there is no clear basis for believing U.S. troop levels can be reduced anytime soon without risking further deterioration in the security situation. He said the best measure of progress is not the number of U.S. troops in Iraq but the degree to which their role in counterinsurgency operations is assumed by Iraqis.

``I think, in honesty, that now looks a lot more like 2007 at the earliest (for) really having serious reductions in the U.S. combat role (and) being certain that the U.S. casualty levels are going down on a lasting basis and being able to reduce the costs of the war,'' Cordesman said in a telephone interview.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said there are 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. It was not clear whether that included the 1,500 soldiers from two battalions of the 2nd brigade of the 1st Armored Division whose deployment to the Ramadi area was described as ``short term'' in a U.S. military statement from Baghdad.

A defense official said the two battalions were expected to be in Anbar for a maximum of four months, operating as part of a Marine force. The official was not authorized to discuss such details and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

A third battalion from the brigade in Kuwait was sent to Baghdad in March as part of a broader plan to improve security in the capital during the formation of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's new cabinet. That cabinet was announced and put in place more than a week ago but still lacks ministers of defense and interior, who control the Iraqi army and police. Whitman said that battalion is still operating in the Baghdad area.

---

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeas...vel_in_2_years/

Insurgent attacks in Iraq at highest level in 2 years
Militants exploiting political uncertainty, Pentagon says
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | May 31, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon reported yesterday that the frequency of insurgent attacks against troops and civilians is at its highest level since American commanders began tracking such figures two years ago, an ominous sign that, despite three years of combat, the US-led coalition forces haven't significantly weakened the Iraq insurgency.

In its quarterly update to Congress, the Pentagon reported that from Feb. 11 to May 12, as the new Iraqi unity government was being established, insurgents staged an average of more than 600 attacks per week nationwide. From August 2005 to early February, when Iraqis elected a parliament, insurgent attacks averaged about 550 per week; at its lowest point, before the United States handed over sovereignty in the spring of 2004, the attacks averaged about 400 per week.

The vast majority of the attacks -- from crude bombing attempts and shootings to more sophisticated, military-style assaults and suicide attacks -- were targeted at US-led coalition military forces, but the majority of deaths have been of civilians, who are far more vulnerable to insurgent tactics.

``Overall, average weekly attacks during this `Government Transition' period were higher than any of the previous periods," the report states. ``Reasons for the high level of attacks may include terrorist and insurgent attempts to exploit a perceived inability of the Iraqi government to constitute itself effectively, the rise of ethno sectarian attacks . . . and enemy efforts to derail the political process leading to a new government."

As if to underscore the grim report, a spate of violence swept Iraq yesterday. Bombs and other attacks killed 54 people, including an American soldier, according to wire reports. The deadliest bombing, in a popular market in a town about 20 miles north of Baghdad, killed at least 25 people and wounded 65.

On Monday, 40 other people were killed in various attacks, including two CBS journalists who died in a bombing that critically wounded a network correspondent. To date, 2,468 US soldiers have died since the March 2003 invasion, while more than 4,000 Iraqi civilians have died in war-related violence since the beginning of the year, according to government figures and media reports.

The Pentagon report, made public yesterday, contained some positive news, including an opinion poll that indicates most Iraqis don't like the insurgents' use of violence as a political tool. In addition, according to the report, a growing number of Iraqi security forces can operate without US military support, more ethnic groups are represented in the security forces, oil production has remained steady, and more than 10,000 new business registrations have been issued.

But the overall picture of progress in Iraq is grim, dominated by the seemingly ceaseless violence.

Despite military crackdowns on insurgents and the installation of the new Iraq government, the Pentagon wasn't optimistic about quelling the violence in the near future. Officials who briefed reporters on the Iraq assessment cautioned that violence against troops and Iraqi civilians probably won't slow until at least 2007 -- if the unity government exerts more of its own authority and, according to the report, ``addresses key sectarian and political concerns" that fuel the bloodshed.

The 65-page report, compiled by Multi-National Forces Iraq in Baghdad, identified a disturbing trend: New signs that former members of Saddam Hussein's regime who are fighting the American-led coalition and other Iraqis who don't like the new government are collaborating with Al Qaeda operatives and other foreign terrorists who are responsible for some of the deadliest attacks in the country.

The progress report also concluded that militias loyal to Iraq's various ethnic groups are to blame for a steady number of ethnic reprisals touched off by the Feb. 22 bombing of a revered Shi'ite Muslim shrine. The militiamen apparently have also infiltrated the Iraqi Security Forces.

``Individual militia members have been incorporated into the ISF, but the loyalties of some probably still lie, to some extent, with their ethno sectarian leaders," according to the report. ``Shi'ite militias, in particular, seek to place members into Army and police units as a way to serve their interests and gain influence."

Though the sectarian violence has subsided a bit in recent weeks -- and fears of a full-blown civil war have not been realized -- conflict among sects is still far higher than before the February mosque attack, according to the report. More than 1,000 casualties from sectarian violence were reported in February, compared with more than 1,500 in March, and about 1,200 in April, according to the Pentagon report. Before the mosque bombing, which has been blamed on foreign terrorists loyal to Al Qaeda, there were a few hundred sectarian-based attacks per month.

On the positive side, Pentagon officials pointed out that newly-trained Iraqi Security Forces have become more capable, and a growing number of units are leading or playing significant roles in anti-insurgent missions.

``Increasingly, Iraqi Security Forces are taking the lead in operations and primary responsibility for the security of their nation," the report said. ``As of May 15, there were two Iraqi divisions, 16 brigades, and 63 Army and National Police battalions with security lead in their areas of responsibility."

Meanwhile, as of May 6, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, and Ministry of Finance have assumed control of 34 bases from US-led forces, according to the assessment. Though the Pentagon has acknowledged that Sunni Muslims in particular are not fully represented, the Iraqi security forces are becoming more representative of the country's ethnic breakdown -- Shi'ite, Sunni, Kurd, and other minorities.

The report also outlined growth trends in the Iraq economy and steady political progress, culminating with the establishment of a unity government in Baghdad earlier this month.

For example, the number of independent mass media outlets has steadily grown; new business registrations are up by nearly 10,000 from the more than 20,000 in early 2005; and weekly oil production has remained at more than 2 million barrels per week.

At the same time, polling data has indicated that most Iraqis do not support violence as a political tool -- a sign that support for the insurgency may be falling, officials said. For example, after the Feb. 22 attack on a revered Shi'ite Muslim shrine in Samarra, 96 percent of Iraqis said such attacks were not acceptable. Another poll cited in the Pentagon report showed that 78 percent of Iraqis believed violence was never acceptable.

Meanwhile coalition forces have received more than 4,500 tips per month from average Iraqis about potential insurgent operations, up dramatically from about 400 in March 2005.

Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.



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