Bush’ plan for Iraq: more troops
President Bush is to announce this week that up to 30,000 extra troops will be deployed to Iraq.
That strategy, it now seems certain, will focus on stabilising the capital through the deployment of five extra US brigades - between 10,000 and 30,000 soldiers - made available by extending tours of duty and accelerating the rotation of fresh troops into the country. An increase of 30,000 would bring the number of US troops in Iraq to 170,000. In addition, the US would pour new resources into a job creation programme - involving painting schools and cleaning streets - that could cost up to $1bn.
The American officials said Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, formally agreed in a long teleconference on Thursday with Mr. Bush to match the American troop increase, made up of five combat brigades that would go in at a rate of roughly one a month, by sending three more Iraqi brigades to Baghdad over the next month and a half
Iraqi forces will begin a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood assault on militants over the next few days, as a first step in the new White House strategy to contain Sunni insurgents and Shia death squads, advisers to Maliki said.
Bush’s apparent determination to send extra troops, rather than set a timetable for withdrawal, represents a rejection of the Iraq Study Group report, which said US policy was not working and urged talks with two of Iraq’s neighbours, Iran and Syria. It also sets the stage for a major battle between a House and Senate newly under Democratic control, put into power largely because of US voters’ misgivings over his conduct of the war.
A crucial element of the plan would include more than doubling the State Department’s reconstruction efforts throughout the country, an initiative intended by the administration to signal that the new strategy would emphasize rebuilding as much as fighting.
But previous American reconstruction efforts in Iraq have failed to translate into support from the Iraqi population, and some Republicans as well as the new Democratic leadership in Congress have questioned if a troop increase would do more than postpone the inevitable and precarious moment when Iraqi forces have to stand on their own.
Congress has the power to halt the increases by cutting off money for Mr. Bush’s proposals. But some Democrats are torn about whether to press ahead with such a move for fear that it will appear that they are not
The officials would not say specifically whether the American troop increase would be carried out if the Iraqis failed to make good on their commitment to add to their own ranks. But they emphasized that the American influx, which would be focused in Baghdad and Anbar Province but could also include a contingency force in Kuwait, could be re-evaluated at any point.
One of the neoconservative thinkers, whose views are believed to have influenced Bush, suggested the military action might last longer than expected. ‘We need a long-lasting surge because we have to keep in mind that we face an enemy here that adapts to our strategy,’ said Frederick Kagan, a military historian and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. ‘If we do a short surge they will just wait us out. We need to surge for at least 18 months.’
He added: ‘The administration understands that they have reached the crossroads in Iraq. They know that any short-term or half measures will be fatal.’
The fresh Bush strategy, to be carried out by General David Petraeus, the new US commanding officer of multinational forces in Iraq, is modelled on Operation Forward Together II, the attempt to retake no-go areas of Baghdad last summer and autumn.
That operation faltered largely through a shortage of US manpower on the ground and Maliki’s unwillingness to agree to raids against the Mahdi army, the Shia militia loyal to firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose assembly members supported Maliki’s government.
US and Iraqi troops used a tactic of ‘take, hold and rebuild’ - driving gunmen out of their strongholds - and following through after the fighting with military civil affairs teams bringing small but noticeable differences to the areas where they were operating, including electricity generation schemes, rubbish collection and repairing water and sewage systems. But when the troops moved on to new areas the gunmen returned.
The emphasis of operations is also expected to shift from preparing Iraqi forces for a quick handover of responsibility to protecting the population.
According to Maliki, military commanders in each area of Baghdad would have full powers to implement the scheme as they saw fit. ‘We will depend on our armed forces to implement this plan and the multinational force will support our forces,’ he said. ‘They will intervene whenever they are called on.
‘There will be no refuge from this plan for anyone operating beyond the law, regardless of their sect or political affiliation,’ he said, adding that the plan would continue until its aims were achieved.
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