General Says Iraq Troop Reductions May Quicken

General Says Iraq Troop Reductions May Quicken
By THOM SHANKER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 29, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/world/middleeast/30military.html?th&emc=th


WASHINGTON — The senior American commander in Iraq said Tuesday that he could reduce American forces to 50,000 troops even before the end of next summer if the expected January elections in Iraq went smoothly.

Gen. Ray Odierno said he had drafted a new plan for transferring duties to the Iraqis.
At War

Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era. Go to the Blog »
Related
From McChrystal’s Mouth to Obama’s Ear (September 30, 2009)

That could ease the strain across the American armed forces and free up extra combat units for duty in the Afghanistan war, which has become a priority for the Obama administration.

In an interview at the Pentagon, the commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, said he had already ordered some service members and equipment diverted from the Iraq mission to Afghanistan, in particular surveillance aircraft and units known as “combat enablers,” which include engineers for clearing roadside bombs and military police officers for training Afghan forces.

The United States and Iraq agreed last year that American combat forces would be out of Iraq by August 2010, leaving 50,000 troops to advise and support the Iraqis. Since that schedule was set, the need for troops in Afghanistan has made that timing especially important — all the more so if commanders in Afghanistan formally request even more troops and President Obama agrees. In recent months American combat forces pulled out of Iraq’s city centers.

General Odierno described his continuing security concerns, especially in the north of Iraq, where there are deep Kurdish-Arab tensions and where homegrown insurgents who claim allegiance to Al Qaeda continue to operate.

But the general said he was confident enough in the path to stability — with orderly elections and a smooth transfer of power in the winter — that he had drafted a new plan that set out how the duties now performed by American forces would be increasingly transferred to Iraqis before the full withdrawal, planned for Dec. 31, 2011. For the final year and a half or so, the Americans would be advising and training the Iraqis and providing logistics to them.

He did caution that if the Iraqi government and military were not able to shoulder the entire burden of responsibility by that deadline, the ministries in Baghdad would have to rely for support on civilian United States agencies, in particular the State and Treasury Departments.

“We failed the first time in 2003, when things were fairly calm and we didn’t have a plan to transition what we had done militarily over to a civilian-led solution to help solve these problems,” General Odierno said.

“We have another opportunity here in 2010 and 2011 to do this,” he added. “What are the enduring functions that have to be transitioned over that will continue to build Iraqi civilian capacity and continue to improve their ability to provide security? We are very focused on that.”

The new Joint Campaign Plan was written in partnership with the American Embassy in Baghdad, the general said, and should be approved later this fall as the detailed map guiding the American withdrawal from Iraq.

The next benchmark for the American military withdrawal is Aug. 31, 2010, when forces must drop to 50,000. Military officers based in Baghdad said Tuesday that American military forces in Iraq numbered slightly more than 124,000, a reduction of 40,000 since 2008.

General Odierno said he had no intention of dropping below the 50,000-troop level required under a bilateral security agreement by the end of August, but he said he might reach that level before the deadline.

“Between now and May, I could accelerate the drawdown,” he said. “If we get through successful elections, and you seat the government peacefully, that provides another level of stability. That will help to reduce tensions.”

General Odierno said he had discussed the military needs for Afghanistan with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior commander in Kabul, and with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top officer in the Middle East, and he said all three had agreed that the military urgently required surveillance and transport aircraft in Afghanistan, as well as engineers and military police officers.

“We have been able to move some already over to Afghanistan,” General Odierno said. “We don’t want to affect the mission in Iraq, but we know some of this is needed in Afghanistan. I think we’ve been able to balance this so far.”

He said overall progress in Iraq was “slow, steady.” The leadership of Iraq’s security units has improved, and there is less sectarianism within these forces, the general said. But pitfalls remain.

“There is still too much political interference in the military,” General Odierno said. “That has always been a case there. It is better than it was, but it is still too much, and from a lot of different sources.”

The north of Iraq remains a serious security concern, especially in Nineveh Province, where, he said, “Al Qaeda in Iraq is still trying to re-establish a foothold and then be able to extend its tentacles down into Baghdad.”

Minority tensions, in particular between Kurds and Arabs in the north, are also a “driver of instability” and could be “exploited to destabilize the government of Iraq,” he noted.

And Iran has not halted its efforts to train insurgents and to send weapons and money in a bid for influence across the southern provinces of Iraq, General Odierno said, although Iranian agents “have reduced some of what they are doing.”

Even so, he said that Iraqi security forces continued to intercept large shipments of weapons and high-powered explosives sent from Iran.