One Utah

The Bush administration’s escalation of U.S. soldiers to Baghdad and Al Anbar Province was supposed to be accompanied by a strong commitment of Iraqi forces. That commitment is behind schedule, as retired Vice Adm. John McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday.

• The Iraqi Army sent to Baghdad only two of the three additional brigades that were to have been in place by February 15. A brigade is supposed to have 3,200 men (Baghdad has a population of 6 million, and counter-insurgency doctrine calls for one soldier for every 50 civilians).
• The personnel strength of the battalions that comprise the two brigades ranges from 43 percent to 82 percent. (A full-strength Iraqi infantry battalion has 759 soldiers, some apparently arrived in Baghdad with only 326).
• Typically 25 percent of an Iraqi Army unit is away on leave or on some other assignment. But U.S. and Iraqi officials also have cited high desertion rates as a serious problem.
• The two brigades that made it to Baghdad are comprised of members of the ethnic Kurdish minority, who don’t know the city and are divided from Arabs by language, culture and decades of enmity.

Although it was announced last fall, the so-called Baghdad security plan is still in the very early stages of implementation. Some areas of the Iraqi capital have reportedly seen less violence due to diminished Shia death squad activity, while other neighborhoods and suburbs have been targeted by car bombs. The additional 48,000 American soldiers slated to go to Iraq probably won’t all be there until sometime in May. Equipment shortages are hampering that effort.

UPDATE #1: A report in The Guardian tells us that General Petraeus’ staff officers in the Green Zone are “still trying to figure out what’s the plan.” They don’t have enough soldiers to do very much yet, and worry that an inevitable increase in American casualties will lead to stronger political efforts to force a withdrawal from Iraq.

UPDATE #2: An article in Time Magazine suggests that the goal of continued Sunni bombings in Baghdad is to shatter any illusion of security and to provoke Shia militiamen, who have been keeping a low profile in recent weeks.

This entry was posted Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Iraq, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.