Text size:

U.S. to beef up presence in Baghdad

Troops will be shifted from other parts of Iraq in effort to stem escalating sectarian violence in the capital after a string of deadly bombings

BY CRAIG GORDON | Newsday Washington Bureau

July 25, 2006

WASHINGTON - The United States is preparing to shift additional forces to Baghdad to bolster a U.S.-Iraqi security plan that even the White House admits isn't working, administration officials said yesterday.

Just six weeks ago, President George W. Bush touted Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Baghdad-first security crackdown as a critical step toward stabilizing Iraq - and paving the way for U.S. troops to leave.

But escalating sectarian fighting in Iraq's capital - part of a spasm of violence that pushed civilian deaths past 100 a day last month - has forced American commanders to prepare to bolster Iraqi forces there, administration sources said.

"It's pretty clear that there's an attempt in Baghdad to create as much chaos and havoc as possible. And it's important to make sure that we address this," White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

Snow acknowledged that the al-Maliki plan to bolster security "has not achieved its objectives."

Al-Maliki visits Washington today, and Baghdad's worsened security situation will be a top agenda item in his talks with President Bush. The two men will then visit troops together at Fort Belvoir, Va., tomorrow after al-Maliki addresses Congress.

U.S. officials said the plan involved shifting troops already in Iraq toward the capital, not a net increase of U.S. troop strength. About 30,000 of the 127,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are stationed in Baghdad.

Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has been meeting with Iraqi officials in recent weeks about increasing the numbers of U.S. and Iraqi forces inside Baghdad, though the exact numbers involved were unclear last night. About 51,000 troops are taking part in the crackdown, mostly Iraqis, with about 7,200 U.S. forces.

Yet any such shift to Baghdad would put more U.S. troops at risk, a change from the current plan for American forces to come off the front lines and serve as a sort of rapid-response back-up for the Iraqi army and police.

Bush administration sources insist that is still the plan for U.S. troops in the long run, particularly as a way to show al-Maliki's government that it can't rely on U.S. help indefinitely.

"There is clearly a serious security challenge around Baghdad, and we want the [al-Maliki] government to deal with this. We don't want to create dependency. We don't want to do it for them," said one source.

But the source added that the strategy of handing over more and more security duties to Iraqi forces "is working in many parts of the country. It's not working in Baghdad right now. ... You constantly adjust the plan."

While the world's attention has been focused on the Israel-Lebanon crisis, Iraq has continued to slide toward chaos. Since Bush's June 13 trip to Iraq, the violence has only worsened, with a spike in killings so sharp in Baghdad last week that some Iraqi politicians have begun to acknowledge their nation is in the throes of civil war.

Kalev Sepp, a former adviser to Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that until al-Maliki can secure Baghdad, it will be difficult for his government to achieve the legitimacy it needs to rule the divided land, even if he must once again lean on U.S. forces to help secure it.

"If the new government is going to prove its legitimacy, it's going to have to be able to enforce law and order in its own capital," said Sepp, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in California.