THE American combat force in Iraq could be cut in half next year as a result
of political pressure in Washington to begin a process of withdrawal from
the war.
Plans are under way for US troops to switch to a “postsurge” strategy that
would concentrate on training the Iraqi army, hunting down Al-Qaeda
terrorists and guarding the country’s borders.
America would retain a significant military presence in Iraq but troop levels
would fall from 165,000 to 100,000 in time for the 2008 presidential
election, and its forces would no longer do the bulk of the fighting.
The proposals represent a serious scaling down of American ambitions in line
with the exit strategy proposed by the Iraq Study Group (ISG), co-chaired by
James Baker and Lee Hamilton, and rejected by President George W Bush last
year. He said last week the group’s recommendations “appealed to me”.
A Pentagon source said the new thinking inside the Bush administration was:
“As long as we don’t leave Iraq, we haven’t lost. It’s that simple. We can
keep our forces indefinitely out of harm’s way, with enough teeth to stop a
full-scale civil war and keep up the hunt for Al-Qaeda.”
The drive for change is being led by Robert Gates, the defence secretary and a
former member of the ISG, and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state.
Gates said last week he fore-saw a future role for America involving “fewer
forces than we have now and forces with a different mission”.
Barry McCaffrey, a retired army general who has advised Bush on strategy, said
the administration was looking for a way out of Iraq. “I think they are
headed toward the door,” he said. They wanted more time for the surge to
succeed, but “failing that, they’re going to start withdrawing”.
The climbdown is in response to growing pressure from the Democratic majority
in Congress and increasingly restive Republicans. Senator John Warner, a
senior Republican on the Senate armed services committee, said last week it
was time for Iraqi troops to show their professionalism and “step up”.
In the short term, there will a “second surge” this autumn, giving General
David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, a last chance to affect momentum
on the ground. The Pentagon has extended tours of duty for existing troops
and will deploy additional brigades this autumn.
The overlap between the arrival and departure of troops could result in the
number of US forces rising to more than 200,000 by the end of this year. “It
will give Petraeus the flexibility and force to take on the enemy as a
prelude to redeployment,” a defence source said.
Dan Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank in
Virginia, said the bulge in forces could be used to facilitate the departure
of American troops. “If the violence spirals out of control, they could be
used to secure the supply lines and the withdrawal routes,” he said.
“There are reasons to have that kind of capability in case things get really
ugly.”
The new thinking is taking place in the midst of the original surge. Troops
are still arriving and US forces will not be at full strength until next
month. But the signs are that the initial success in reducing sectarian
violence has been halted.
Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric who was thought to have gone into
hiding in Iran at the beginning of the surge, resurfaced in the holy Iraqi
city of Najaf last week and demanded that US forces leave the country.
Iraqi and US troops detained a militant leader with alleged ties to the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard in a raid on Sadr City, the Baghdad slum and
stronghold of Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The US military described the detainee as
“the suspected leader of a secret cell terrorist network” facilitating the
movement of explosives from Iran to Iraq.
The US military announced yesterday the deaths of eight US soldiers and one
marine, making May one of the deadliest months for American forces for
years. Bush warned last week that the violence in Iraq would intensify this
summer in anticipation of a report by Petraeus on the impact of the surge in
September.
Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, is due to hold talks in Baghdad
tomorrow with Hassan Kazemi Qomi, his Iranian counterpart, about stabilising
Iraq – another key recommendation of the ISG.
“I wouldn’t expect a stunning, startling breakthrough,” Crocker said.
The Bush administration is losing faith in the ability of the Iraqi
government, led by Nouri al-Maliki, to bring Sunnis into the national
reconciliation process, which was originally considered an essential
political component of the military surge.
Gates believes that attention should switch to cultivating tribal sheikhs and
local leaders following some success in Anbar province, where local Sunni
chiefs have joined the fight against Al-Qaeda in Iraq. There will also be a
purge of sectarian militants.
There are no plans to oust Maliki as prime minister, despite rumours in
Baghdad that his days may be numbered. Peter Rodman, a former assistant
defence secretary who is now with the Brookings Institution, an independent
policy centre, said: “We’re sticking with Maliki. If we look like we’re
messing around with Iraqi politics, it is a big mistake.”
The shift in military strategy will be coordinated in Washington by
Lieutenant-General Doug-las Lute, Bush’s new war czar, who is known to have
opposed the troop surge. But it may run into opposition from generals in
Baghdad, who believe Washington’s “political clock” and their “military
clock” are out of sync.
Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno, Petraeus’s number two in Iraq, said
America had previously “rushed the transition [to the Iraqi army] and soon
lost many areas that we had before. This time it’s about having enough
combat power to stay”.
Bush hopes the new strategy will attract cross-party support in advance of the
2008 elections. Having seen off the attempt by Democrats to tie funding of
the war to troop withdrawals last week, he hopes troop levels will be on
enough of a downward path by the end of 2008 to take the sting out of the
issue.
“Bush has an obligation to leave Iraq in as stable a condition as he can
manage,” said Rodman. “If the next president wants to pull the plug, that’s
his choice.”
Can America’s strategy succeed?
How is the troop surge going?
During June the US surge will reach full strength. In September, General David
Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, will provide a progress report. So far
the picture in Baghdad is bleak, although the marines are helping to pacify
Anbar province.
After an initial fall-off, the average number of sectarian killings has risen
to presurge levels of 22.5 a day, and Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shi’ite cleric,
has felt confident enough to reappear in Iraq. President George W Bush
warned that the violence would increase in anticipation of Petraeus’s
report.
What will happen after September?
There will be a temporary “second surge” in US troops from 165,000 to 200,000
as new deployments overlap with current forces. They can be used to step up
the pressure on insurgents and sectarian forces one last time in the run-up
to Christmas.
After that, US troops are expected to step back from combat and concentrate on
training the Iraqi army, chasing Al-Qaeda and guarding Iraq’s borders. In
2008 troop levels could be lowered to 100,000.
What about the “political” surge?
Hope is fading that Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has the will to carry
out political reconciliation with the Sunnis. Despite promises, an oil
revenue-sharing law has not been passed and plans for provincial elections
have stalled. He is still being pressed to scale back “de-Ba’athification”
and to purge the worst sectarian leaders from his government and security
forces.
Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, believes it is more productive to win
over local sheikhs and leaders than to place confidence in Iraq’s central
government.
Can Iraq’s neighbours help?
Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, is meeting his Iranian counterpart on
Monday for talks on stabilising Iraq. But Iran is continuing to supply
advanced roadside bombs to
Iraq, and Syria remains the conduit for foreign fighters into the country.
Bush is sceptical about the value of talks with Iran, but has bowed to
pressure.
What will success look like?
Nobody is talking about victory. However, if US troops can be cut in number
and kept largely out of harm’s way without Iraq plunging into a brutal civil
war, the Bush administration will redefine the war as a modest success.
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