Iraq: Reluctant to Set Benchmarks?
Maliki decried a raid conducted this week by American soldiers in Sadr City to search for a death squad commander–particularly since the prime minister has promised Sadr autonomy in exchange for political support. At his press conference, Bush seemed almost apologetic about the tensions stirred by the raid.
"The idea that we need to coordinate with [Maliki] makes sense to me," he said. "There's a lot of operations taking place, which means that sometimes communications may not be as good as they should be."
But such clarity is hard to come by in the broken city of Baghdad, where American officials are increasingly concerned about the slow pace with which Iraqi security forces are developing. Lt. Gen. James Thurman, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, responsible for security in Baghdad, has said that weeks after a request to bring 3,000 Iraqi troops to the capital to reinforce the security initiative, only a few hundred have arrived. Many Iraqi soldiers openly disobey orders to deploy to Baghdad, which has seen a 43 percent rise in violence since the summer and the death of some 2,660 Iraqis last month alone. Much of that violence–and the reluctance of Iraqi security forces to head to Baghdad–has to do with militias settling sectarian scores and what many see as the underequipping of Iraqi soldiers.
"If Iraqi security forces aren't as powerful as they guys that they're fighting, they're going to be squeamish," says Gavrilis.
The Ministry of the Interior's Shiite-dominated police units are infiltrated with death squads and need far more supervision than they're getting, says a senior Pentagon officer. American officials will soon be expanding the current program of some 3,600 embedded U.S. military advisers in Iraq, who work and live with Iraqi soldiers and police. The program has been criticized for not properly preparing U.S. soldiers and marines to train their Iraqi counterparts–and for not providing enough military personnel to do the job.
"Greater numbers of embeds would make a difference," says Gavrilis. "Supervision is one of the critical things in police training to stem militias."
To that end, Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, signaled this week that he may call for more troops to head to Baghdad—a move that may also involve increasing the overall level of U.S. troops in the country, currently at some 145,000, to build up Baghdad's basic infrastructure and security.
"Now, do we need more troops to do that?" said Casey. "Maybe."
Rumsfeld today rejected the notion that such a statement constituted a call for more troops.
But the deteriorating condition of the country raises the equally politically sensitive question of calling upon more National Guard and reserve soldiers–on the heels of the November elections–to bolster an Army and Marine Corps stretched to their limits. Such a call may include changing the rules by which guardsmen deploy, which currently involve two-year deployment caps.
"We would expect that shortly after elections the OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] will come up with some kind of proposal that could run the gamut from the tolerable to the intolerable," says retired Brig. Gen. Stephen Koper, president of the National Guard Association of the United States. Such changes fall within the purview of the secretary to make, adds Koper, but could result in a "significant impact" on rates of volunteerism.
And that's a significant consideration for a president pushing Americans to support a war that is increasingly unpopular on the home front. As he made his case to the American people this week, Bush reiterated that Maliki has his support–as long as he has the stomach to make the tough choices. The United States is looking to establish benchmarks in a number of areas–including constitutional reform, sharing oil revenues, training of security forces–but Bush did not say what consequences would flow from failure to meet such goals.
In the meantime, U.S. military officials in Iraq express private frustration that Maliki continues to ride the fence–and country suffers the consequences.
"He's losing civilian support–it's a steady decline, partly because of inaction," says the American military official in Baghdad. And there as here–both in the streets of Baghdad and on American soil during an election year–the people are the prize.
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