Obama sends 450 more troops to Iraq as US mission grows

On Wednesday the White House announced it would send up to 450 additional troops to Anbar province in eastern Iraq. The troops will advise and otherwise assist Iraqi forces in their battle against the Islamic State(IS) in the province.

+ Add Image

With the addition of these 450 troops, the total number of U.S. military forces in Iraq will now number 3,550, less than four years after the U.S. pulled all of its troops out of the country. The White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, sounded the regular refrain of the Obama administration: “These additional US troops will not serve in a combat role.”

In spite of constant bombing by a U.S.-led coalition of IS positions, the group has managed to retain much of the territory it took and has even driven Iraqi forces out of some cities such as Ramadi, although Iraqi forces have taken the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State. There is no sign yet of Iraqi forces being able to retake the major city of Mosul.

The new troops are termed "advisers" by the White House. They will provide "operational advice and planning support for Iraqi forces" with the aim of improving their ability to "plan, lead and conduct operations" against the Islamic State, also called ISIS or Daesh. As with the earlier occupation of Iraq, the UK is a junior partner in the campaign against IS. It is sending 125 more trainers to Anbar province as well.

The new troops are being sent to a base at Taqaddum, just 15 miles from Ramadi, the capital of Anbar,just recently captured by the Islamic State. The Americans will be in a position where they may be subject to attack by IS and suffer casualties. This might be used as a reason to send even further troops although it could also cause a reaction against intervention. US officials described the new deployment as follows:The new U.S. forces will begin arriving in six to eight weeks. About a quarter of them will be advisers; the remainder will provide security and other logistics.The U.S. forces will advise the 8th Iraqi Army Division, based at al-Taqaddum, on intelligence gathering, logistics, troop deployments and other tactical and administrative improvements to help them develop a plan to retake of Ramadi. That division includes forces that fled the Islamic State attack on the city last month.Note that most of the troops deployed are to protect the hundred or so advisers. The administration must realize that they are locating in an area where their troops will likely be attacked. Obama has not ruled out further steps to be taken in the fight against the Islamic State. There are obvious signs of mission creep already. Some Republicans including John McCain are urging Obama to further involve the U.S.

Obama and US generals at odds over boots on the ground in Iraq

For several weeks now there has been an apparent tension between Obama and some US generals with respect to the role of "boots on the ground" in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq.

Chair of the US House Armed Services Committee, Buck Mckeon a Republican from California claims that the generals who are in command of the US operations in Iraq have been pushing for US troops to actively join combat: “Our military commanders have all laid out scenarios where we need more troop... if we don’t put boots on the ground, we can’t form the coalition.” Obama has insisted that a ground war with US boots on the ground is not even being considered.
In part, the Obama position simply ignores the reality that the US already has "boots on the ground" in Iraq, about 1,600 of them. The official position is that these troops are simply advisers but there are reports that they have actually entered battle with the Kurds even though officially they are not on a combat mission. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Congress that the US has not officially reengaged in the war in Iraq at least on the ground: “Instead, these advisers are supporting Iraqi and Kurdish forces in supporting the government’s plan to stand up Iraqi national guard units,”
Both Robert Gates, Obama's former Defense Secretary and former president George W Bush, doubted that Obama could achieve his goal of defeating IS without US ground troops. Gates told CBS: "They're not gonna be able to be successful against ISIS strictly from the air, or strictly depending on the Iraqi forces, or the Peshmerga, or the Sunni tribes acting on their own. So there will be boots on the ground if there's to be any hope of success in the strategy. Gates thought that it was a mistake for Obama to continue insisting that there would be no boots on the ground as he was trapping himself into a position he would later need to abandon.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also indicated he would recommend U.S. ground troops if he thought this was required and told reporters: 'I stand by the statement,' he said when asked about testimony before a Senate committee last week in which he first made the assertion. ‘I will recommend… what it takes to destroy ISIS.' Dempsey insisted there is no 'air power alone solution' and it may take the use of boots on the ground to defeat the Islamic State. Obama agrees but wants to use proxy forces as boots on the ground rather than the politically risky use of US forces.
 Top officials in Anbar are also asking that the US send troops into the province. However, these officials are only still top officials there because Iraq was unable to hold elections in Anbar because of security issues. The Iraq government itself does not want US troops on the ground. A cleric associated with the Al Sadr bloc has even threatened to attack any US troops. Many Iraqi Sunnis in areas occupied by the Islamic State prefer them to the Shia-dominated central government. They will likely help defend the Islamic State against the US and central government forces.
Obama could very well be drawn into an open-ended quagmire in Iraq. What started out with a few advisers has even now reached 1,600 and their role appears to be gradually becoming more extensive with engagement in the front lines on occasion. I expect special forces are already engaged in secret unreported missions. It would hardly be a giant step to send a thousand or so more actual boots on the ground with Obama deciding that he should follow the recommendations of his own key military figures.

Security transfer stalled in Iraq region.

This article is from AP.
The article points out some of the remaining problems that linger just under the surface of a relatively more peaceful situation than has existed for some time in Iraq. There are conflicts between different Sunni groups and between Sunni and Shia still and also there is no solution yet to the borders of Kurdistan or the oil law. Groups seem to be jockeying to better their position for upcoming elections scheduled for the fall.

Analysis: Security transfer stalled in Iraq region
By BRIAN MURPHY – 1 day ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's government hopes to bring the entire country under its security control by year's end. But one critical area stands in the way: the western province of Anbar, where the Sunni insurgency was born and later received its first blows from a civil uprising.
The transfer from U.S. military authority in Anbar has become stalled by worries that a hasty move could tempt unrest and reopen rivalries — drawing in the same armed Sunni factions that the U.S. courted to help uproot al-Qaida in Iraq.
The cautious approach also apparently reflects a desire by Washington not to risk any new complications while Iraqi leaders tussle with a host of messy problems, including seeking agreements on holding provincial elections and opening oil fields to foreign investors.
Talks on Anbar — a vast swath stretching from near Baghdad to the western borders — have moved into the slow lane after much fanfare last month when the planned transfer to Iraqi security control was announced and then abruptly put on hold.
The biggest issue in the holdup is the fear that internal political rivalries in Anbar could escalate into open conflict without U.S. troops as a buffer.
On one side is the old-guard political leadership in Anbar, known as the Iraqi Islamic Party. The other emerging power is the Awakening Council movement — the groups that turned against al-Qaida last year and helped stir a wider Sunni backlash against the insurgency across Iraq.
The challenge is how to withdraw American control without either side feeling it is sacrificing influence or facing pressure from the Shiite-led Iraqi military forces that could step in.
The internal intrigue in Anbar is already growing. Both side are jockeying ahead of provincial elections that Iraq hopes to hold this fall.
Further rifts could provide an opening for al-Qaida to try to regain some footing in Anbar, where insurgents still manage to stage infrequent — but significant — attacks.
Last month, a group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing near Fallujah that killed more than 20 people, including three U.S. Marines and prominent sheiks who had turned against the insurgents. One of the Marines commanded the battalion in the area.
A day after the attack, the U.S. military announced the postponement in the ceremonies to handing over Anbar province to Iraqi security control. The statement said a "new date will be announced as soon as it is made available."
Iraqi officials have hinted at a date sometime after the provincial elections, which are scheduled for Oct. 1.
Sheik Abdul-Karim al-Assal, deputy head of the Anbar Awakening Council, said a security blueprint has been presented to the government. The proposal seeks to bring the Awakening groups into the official security fold.
"We have the ability of maintaining the security of the province along with Iraqi police and army after the hand over," he said.
Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, has said negotiations on Anbar are at "a delicate stage" and cannot be rushed. Still, on Wednesday's security handover in the southern province of Qadisiyah, he said Iraqi leaders hope to have their military and police in full charge of the entire country by the end of year.
The puzzle ahead is bigger than just Anbar. Several other provinces remain under U.S. security command, including such key regions as Baghdad, the northern city of Mosul and the oil-rich area around Kirkuk.
But Anbar has deep symbolism. The urban battles in 2004 in Anbar's main cities, Fallujah and Ramadi, became rallying points for the insurgency and sent the message to Washington that there would be no quick and clean exit from Iraq.
Anbar is also the heartland of Iraq's Sunnis, who were favored under Saddam Hussein and then pushed to the margins by the Shiite majority that took over after his ouster.
The strains and suspicions aren't just within Anbar.
Brian Fishman, an expert on the Iraqi insurgency at the U.S. Military Academy, said the rising power of the Awakening Councils in Anbar — sometimes called Sons of Iraq — has helped calm the nation but unsettled the Shiite establishment that replaced Saddam.
The Awakening Council movement "controls the ground and serves the function of a local police force" in Anbar, Fishman said.
"They are resistant to (Shiite) control over them, and at the same time, the Shiite parties in Baghdad are mistrustful of the Sons of Iraq," he said.
"But," he added, "there is no way the government of Iraq can extend any meaningful power over time unless they work with the Sons of Iraq."
Brian Murphy has reported from Iraq at various stages since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Hosted by
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Deadly Iraq blast in Anbar days before security handoff.

This is from the LAtimes.
Al Qaeda in Iraq may be down but certainly it is not out as these actions show. The recent pronouncements of the Americans about the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq is a bit like Bush's pronouncement years ago about mission accomplished in Iraq. I suppose the mission is accomplished in the sense that Americans are probably not focused very much on the war anymore but on the upcoming election and the U.S. economy. I am quite surprised that there is not more reaction by the U.S. public about the billions if not trillions of dollars being spent by th U.S. on its foreign wars. Americans can no longer afford their houses in many cases but they can afford to support multi-billion dollar wars that are sinking them into even more debt.

Deadly Iraq blast in Anbar comes days before security handoff
A suicide bomber kills 21 at a meeting of sheiks and city leaders in the province that has been seen as a security success story. In Mosul, explosions kill at least 18.By Doug SmithLos Angeles Times Staff Writer9:45 AM PDT, June 26, 2008BAGHDAD — Nearly 40 Iraqis were killed and more than 100 injured today in a suicide attack at a town meeting in Anbar province and two blasts in the northern city of Mosul.The mayor and tribal chief of Garma were killed along with 19 others when a bomber blew himself up during a meeting of sheiks and city leaders of the town about 15 miles northeast of Fallouja. Another 20 were injured.The attack came only days before the U.S. military planned to hand over responsibility for security in the western province to the Iraqis.Once considered lost to insurgents, Anbar became a success story after tribal leaders banded together to combat Al Qaeda in Iraq.The U.S. military said the bombing was consistent with Al Qaeda in Iraq. A statement said U.S.-led forces were among the injured.The attack followed by days two others targeting government buildings where U.S. forces were meeting with Iraqi local officials in an effort to restore public services and establish democratic processes.Anbar officials said it was too soon to tell whether there would be a setback for the transfer, which was believed to be planned for next week."We will see whether the attack of Fallouja today might have an affect," said Abdul Salam Ani, chairman of the Anbar Provincial Council.In Mosul, Ninevah province Gov. Duraid Kashmola was inspecting the site of a rocket attack near the governor's building when a car bomb exploded. At least 18 people were killed and more than 70 injured in the two attacks.Kashmola was unharmed, police said.

This a version of the warlord model of Afghanistan where warlords grouped into the Northern Alliance together with US and others to takeover Afghanistan. Perhaps the US can form an alliance to overthrow Maliki eventually.

The Bush administration’s new “model” in Iraq’s Anbar province
By James Cogan
1 June 2007
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

An improvement in the security situation facing US troops in the western Iraqi province of Anbar is being hailed by the Bush administration as proof that its “surge” in Iraq is working and provides a “model” for the rest of the country. According to the New York Times, “the progress has inspired an optimism in the American command that, among some officials, borders on giddiness”.

There has, without question, been a change in the province. In May, only 12 US soldiers lost their lives in Anbar despite 124 deaths across the country—the third highest monthly toll of the war. In most months since the 2003 invasion, a third to a half of US casualties were suffered in Anbar. Over the past four years, guerilla fighters have killed and wounded thousands of American troops in the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, and in the numerous villages and hamlets that line the Euphrates River as it flows from Iraq’s border with Syria.

Even more remarkable than the casualty decline, US troops are now conducting foot patrols in areas of the province they once only entered in armoured vehicles and with fingers on triggers. Popular hatred in Anbar toward the occupation has run deep. US efforts to subjugate the province have proven utterly ruthless.

While there are no exact figures, thousands of Iraqis were killed during the two US assaults on Fallujah in April and again in November 2004. The entire city was virtually reduced to rubble. Ramadi, the provincial capital, is also in ruins after years of constant fighting, artillery bombardments and air strikes. Every aspect of social infrastructure—electricity supply, clean water, sewerage, hospitals, schools—has collapsed. Both cities have been turned into prison camps, with every movement of residents controlled by curfews, checkpoints and barricades.

It is likely that well over 100,000 people, or close to 10 percent of Anbar’s 1.3 million pre-war inhabitants, have been killed under the American occupation. The decrease in attacks on US troops, however, is not because of the years of repression. The modest change is being credited to a decision late last year by Anbar’s traditional Sunni Arab sheiks to order their tribes to fight the Al Qaeda-aligned Islamic fundamentalist guerilla groups.

Something of a legend has been built up around Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, the 36-year-old leader of the anti-Al Qaeda tribal alliance known as the Anbar Salvation Council. According to various accounts, Abdul Sattar became a US ally and called for the destruction of Al Qaeda in Iraq after his father and three brothers were murdered. Last September, his Risha tribe was joined by 40 other tribes and sub-tribes, some of whom had previously supplied fighters to the anti-occupation insurgency, in what amounts to a blood feud against the takfiris, or Islamic fundamentalists.

Abdul Sattar told an Institute for War and Peace Reporting correspondent last December: “We are now fighting the takfiris, so either we will survive or they will.” Since then, thousands of loyalists have enlisted in the US-trained and funded Iraqi security forces or joined tribal paramilitaries known as Emergency Response Units (ERUs). As a result, the number of police in Anbar soared from a few thousand a year ago to 10,000 by the end of April. The army division in Anbar has enlisted as many as 6,000 new troops. The ERUs—which are reportedly virtually indistinguishable in their dress from Iraqi insurgents—have 2,000 fighters in Ramadi alone.

The transformation in security was described by the New York Times on April 29: “For most of the past few years, the government centre in downtown Ramadi, the seat of the provincial government, was under near continual siege by insurgents... Entering meant sprinting from an armoured vehicle to the front door of the building to evade snipers’ bullets. Now, however, the building is being renovated... Hotels are being built next door...

“Violence has fallen swiftly throughout Ramadi and its sprawling rural environs, residents and American and Iraqi officials said. Last summer, the American military recorded as many as 25 violent acts a day in the Ramadi region, ranging from shootings and kidnappings to roadside bombs and suicide attacks. In the past several weeks, the average has dropped to four...”

According to US commander General David Petraeus, tribal informers have enabled the American military to find more insurgent weapons caches in the first five months of this year than all of 2006. He boasted that the situation in the once volatile Anbar town of Hit was now so stable he could “walk the streets eating an ice-cream”.

While the US military may be gloating about its short-term success, it is well aware of what type of regime the sheiks are establishing in Anbar. One soldier told the New York Times: “It’s like the Mafia.”

The sheiks are not primarily fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq for revenge, but for the material benefits that flow from dominating the province. With US military assistance, they are eliminating their main rival for control over the extensive smuggling rackets that pass through Anbar to Syria and Jordan.

It is also likely that US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan have been involved in winning over the tribes. The Bush administration has been prevailing on Saudi Arabia, in particular, to help shore up the occupation. The Saudi monarchy could well have provided the Iraqi sheiks with money, as well as arms and intelligence.

The timing of the formation of the Anbar Salvation Council suggests that some type of deal was done. Last August, an internal US assessment of the situation in Anbar concluded that the province had largely fallen into Al Qaeda’s hands and there was little that the American military could do about it. Some of the recommended solutions, the Washington Post reported last November, were the establishment of a “Sunni state in Anbar” and “creating a local paramilitary force”. Abdul Sattar declared his war on Al Qaeda shortly after the assessment was published.

The ambitions of the sheiks have only been heightened by estimates that as many as 100 billion barrels of oil may lie below the deserts of Anbar province. In the event the estimates are correct, the sheiks are positioning themselves to be the primary beneficiaries of the allocation of contracts to transnational oil conglomerates.

The venality of the tribal collaboration with the US military was best summed up by Sattar himself. According to Stars and Stripes, when he was asked why he was cooperating with the US instead of fighting it, he replied: “Vietnam beat the Americans, and what did it get them? Thirty years later, they’re still living in poverty.”

The sheiks are now preparing to take political control of Anbar. In April, more than 200 tribal heads gathered in the Anbar town of Hamdhiyah and formed “Anbar Awakening,” a party that will contest the provincial elections that are supposed to take place by the end of the year. They are predicting they will win by an “overwhelming” majority.

While the developments in Anbar have had some impact on security, they are already creating new problems for the occupation. The promotion of the tribes has inevitably alienated and cut across the interests of Sunni factions that the US has been courting in Baghdad to assist in ending the insurgency elsewhere in Iraq. The governor whom the sheiks are intending to dislodge is a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), the largest Sunni party whose members have religious sympathies with the fundamentalist insurgents.

The attitude of the Sunni religious establishment toward the US-tribal alliance was expressed by the leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars, Harith al-Dhari, who has been driven into exile. Last month, he denounced the Anbar Salvation Council as “a band of thieves and bandits”.

More fundamentally, the elevation of petty tribal despots into power over an entire province is another demonstration of the neo-colonial agenda behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Thousands of American troops are not in Iraq to assist some type of transition to democracy. They are there to erect a pliable puppet regime that will accept long-term US domination over the country and its resources. In the sheiks of Anbar, the Bush administration has found, at least for now, willing collaborators.