HOT on the heels of Iraq’s election, American forces have begun discreetly withdrawing from one of the country’s worst combat zones, leaving it in the hands of Iraqi security forces.

Starting five days ago, two Iraqi battalions began assuming control of an infamous area of inner Baghdad surrounding Haifa Street that has become a battle zone between insurgents and coalition forces. The handover should be completed within another week.

The move is the first step in a much broader post-election plan to scale back the US military presence in towns across rebellious central Iraq, leaving behind “advisers” to help the Iraqi Army to take over security duties.

If it works, British and American troops can look forward to a relatively swift exit from Iraq. But if the Iraqi forces cannot control the situation the US strategy for withdrawing could be thrown back by years.

The Haifa Street handover “is a very big step for Iraqi security forces and will probably serve as a model for what is to come,” Lieutenant- Colonel Thomas MacDonald, commander of the 1st Battalion 9th Cavalry Regiment, told The Times. “These guys are our ticket out of here. A successful security force, Iraqi-led and manned, equals American forces going home,” said Captain Chris Ford, an American company commander who has had 60 per cent of his troops wounded during their tour in the a l-Karkh district surrounding Haifa Street.

The key question for coalition commanders is how well the inexperienced Iraqi units will fare against a committed and professional insurgent force in the centre of the capital. The handover plan is bold. Within a week the 1,600 men of the Iraqi 302nd and 303rd battalions will have assumed responsibility for an area within a 2.5-mile radius of Haifa Street. By the summer a 25 sq km (9.6 square mile) swath of Central Baghdad is due to be handed over to the Baghdad Division, comprising three brigades of Iraqi troops.

Haifa Street has “consistently been the city’s toughest area, one of continual resistance centred on former regimists, Wahhabis and Salafists,” said Lieutenant-Colonel MacDonald. A core of American advisers will remain attached to each Iraqi battalion to communicate with coalition command and, if necessary, call upon American airpower and quick- reaction forces as back-up.

The 800 members of the Iraqi Army’s 302nd Battalion, which has assumed responsibility for the southern end of Haifa Street, still has 50 American troops attached to it. But the plan is for future Iraqi battalions to have as few as 9 US advisers. As yet the Iraqis lack the sophisticated equipment of the US soldiers they are replacing, though there are moves to improve their armaments. They are deploying with little more than 150 rounds of ammunition and an assault rifle each. For transport they have Japanese pickups and soft-skinned lorries instead of American armoured personnel carriers.

Civilian contractors will supply their bases with food and water and their serious casualties will face treatment in lightly guarded civilian hospitals.

“They don’t have military hospitals here yet,” said Captain Kevin Bradley, the senior US adviser to the Iraqi 302nd Battalion. “Once when we had a significant contact the Iraqis were ‘evaccing’ their wounded to the same hospital as the insurgents were taking their casualties. That time it went the Iraqis’ way and they made some more arrests.”

However, the Iraqi units have advantages the Americans do not. In the al-Karkh district two Iraqi battalions are taking over from a single US battalion, putting nearly 1,600 pairs of infantry boots on the ground in a zone previously trodden by 700 infantry.

The morale of the Iraqi forces appears high after the election, during which they safely secured the vast majority of Baghdad polling sites. And they have a much greater ability to communicate with the local people and glean intelligence.

“We could walk around here for three years more and not learn what these guys pick up in a week,” said Sergeant Bert Walton, an American squad leader. “Plus their rules of engagement are different to ours so they can probably wrap things up pretty quick.” The US and Iraqi forces have a shared interest in the latter’s success. “The day I want to see is the one when I say ‘thank you’ to the US,” said Colonel Alla Mohsine, executive officer with the 302nd Battalion. “ ‘Thank you very much, but now we can defend ourselves so please can you leave and go home?’ ”

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