Abizaid seeks more combat troops for Iraq
By James Drummond in Baghdad and Peter Spiegel in London
Published: April 12 2004 8:39 | Last Updated: April 12 2004 19:18
news.ft.com
Latest developments in Iraq
General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in the Middle East, asks for more troops to quell the growing unrest.
A shaky truce between US Marines and Sunni rebels in Fulluja "tenuously" holds.
70 US-led coalition soldiers and 700 Iraqis are killed in less than a week of fighting.
US vice-president Dick Cheney visits Tokyo and praises Japan for standing up to Iraqi insurgents and keeping its troops in Iraq.
US President George W. Bush will hold a news conference on Tuesday evening to answer questions now inundating his administration
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General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in the Middle East, has asked the Pentagon for two additional combat brigades to be deployed in response to the widespread rebellion in Iraq, reversing a year-long trend of reducing the American military presence in the war-torn country.
The request for new troops highlights the extent to which the week-long revolt has forced the US to rethink its security strategy in Iraq. Pentagon officials had been aiming to hand over an increasing share of the security burden to Iraqi units and reduce troop levels to 115,000 following the recent rotation of American forces.
But Gen Abizaid acknowledged on Monday that US-trained Iraqi security forces-including police, civil defence units, and the new Iraqi army-had performed poorly. "That was a great disappointment to us," he said.
A US military spokesman said that 70 coalition soldiers and an estimated 700 insurgents had been killed since April 1 in the latest upsurge of fighting. According to agency reports, hospital officials inside Falluja were reporting up to 600 deaths in the city. Gen Abizaid declined to comment on how many troops would be included in the new deployment, saying the details are still being discussed with the joint staff, the US's senior uniformed leadership. But he said the new forces he sought would have a "strong mobile combat arms capability" that would amount to "two brigades of combat power, if not more." In the US army, a brigade is composed of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers.
The request comes as the US military leadership reported that a ceasefire in the troubled Sunni Triangle city of Falluja was holding, albeit "tenuously". Several southern towns, including Kut, Nasiriya and Hilla, in the Shia south that had been occupied by insurgents loyal to radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had been retaken by coalition forces.
The holy city of Najaf remained under the control of Mr Sadr, however, as did parts of Karbala, US officials said. Gen Abizaid said the US is committed to killing or capturing the cleric, who is believed to be holed up in Najaf.
Currently, there are 135,000 American troops in Iraq, slightly more than the 115,000 planned for this spring. This is because of a temporary overlap produced by a three-month-long rotation that was to see all US forces replaced by fresh soldiers.
Commanders have already extended the stay of some troops in the Baghdad-based 1st armoured division, who were to return home this month but were deployed south to help the Polish-led multinational division when hostilities broke out last week. There have been repeated calls in Washington by critics of the the Bush administration for additional troops in light of the unrest.
The failure of indigenous Iraqi forces during the revolt could further complicate US efforts to reduce its presence in the country, which the Pentagon's civilian leadership had originally hoped to be in the tens of thousands at this point in the conflict.
"It's still going to take a significant amount of time to ensure that they are properly equipped, properly trained and credible and capable," said Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, head of coalition ground forces in Iraq. US commanders have launched a plan to embed US special forces with some Iraqi security units as a way to help them become proficient.
Gen Abizaid said there has been an additional push to get senior officers from the old Iraqi military, disbanded last year, to take senior positions in the Iraqi chain of command in an attempt to bring more professionalism to the force. The move appeared a reversal of elements of the US's de-Baathification policy, although the general said he has personally been involved in vetting the new appointments.
"In the next couple of days, you'll see a large number of senior officers being appointed to key positions in the ministry of defence and in the Iraqi joint staff and in Iraqi field commands," he said. "I can tell you the competition for these positions has been fierce." |
