By Raymond Whitaker
Published: 18 March 2007
US troop levels in Iraq are set to rise higher than at any time since the war began four years ago, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
This summer, troop levels will top 160,000 - compared with the 150,000 there were at the time of the invasion.
As Britain prepares to pull 1,600 troops out of southern Iraq, the Pentagon has just obtained the agreement of the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, to deploy an additional combat aviation brigade of 2,600, consisting of ground forces and a full complement of helicopters.
The brigade was due to go to Iraq in the summer as part of a regular rotation of troops, but is being sent in early to support the "surge" of American forces approved by President George Bush in January.
At that point the plan, aimed at bringing the insurgency in Baghdad and neighbouring Anbar province under control, called for an additional 21,500 combat troops to be sent to Iraq. But the figure has since crept up to nearly 30,000, with 2,200 military police being added to handle the higher number of people being detained in security sweeps, plus a further 2,400 combat and service-support personnel. Pentagon figures released on Friday show a total of 7,200 troops have been added to the "surge", taking the overall increase to 28,700.
According to the US military thinktank GlobalSecurity.org, there were 132,000 American ground troops in Iraq at the beginning of this year. When the reinforcements finish arriving by the end of June, the total will rise above 160,000, more than at any point in the past four years. Tuesday is the fourth anniversary of the start of the conflict with the "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad.
In 2003, when the American-led coalition smashed its way to Baghdad in three weeks, there were never more than 150,000 US troops in the country. By March 2004, when Saddam Hussein was in custody and Mr Gates's over-confident predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, was anticipating an early exit, the total slipped as low as 117,500. The only months the US deployment approached 160,000 were November and December 2005, when extra forces were in place during the national elections. Their numbers were reduced immediately afterwards, but the formation of a government has done nothing to quell the violence.
Last week the Pentagon admitted for the first time that there was civil war in parts of Iraq. Its assessment of the final quarter of 2006 was its bleakest ever, with record levels of violence. Attacks increased to more than 1,000 a week and average daily casualties rose above 140 - and those figures, the report admitted, are based purely on "violence observed by or reported to the US-led military coalition". The real extent of violence is likely to be much greater.
Describing worsening sectarian divisions, the report said: "Illegally armed groups are engaged in a self-sustaining cycle of politically motivated violence, using tactics that include indiscriminate bombing, murder, and indirect fire to intimidate people and stoke sectarian conflict."
Up to 9,000 civilians are fleeing the country each month as a result, according to the Pentagon. The UNHCR says that if internally displaced people are included, the figure rises to something like 50,000 a month.
This is the background to the "surge" operation, which began a month ago. American and Iraqi forces are attempting to "clear and hold" Baghdad, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.
"Once security forces have locked down an area," an official told the IoS, "we are applying a tailored combination of social, governance, economic and political measures. The aim is to take advantage of the temporary absence of insurgents, and render that absence permanent by 'hard-wiring them out' of the environment that they used to dominate.
"Then they may not be able to return, or if they do they will find greatly increased resistance and will stand out better against the background of the population, and it will be harder [for them] to operate."
Commanders claim there have been positive early results, with a decline in sectarian killings in Baghdad, although February saw a record number of bombings. They also admit that to some extent violence has simply been displaced outside the capital - on Friday, in Anbar province, two suicide truck bombers driving tankers filled with chlorine killed at least eight people south of Fallujah. About 350 civilians and six US troops were treated for chlorine gas exposure.
"Moving security forces into an insurgent area to 'shut it down' is like stamping on a puddle - the large pool of water disappears, but little splashes and spots radiate out from it," said the official.
"So if security operations are all you are doing, they will have local and temporary effects. Violence will decrease, but only where you are operating, and when you leave it will come back."
Major General William Caldwell, the most senior US military spokesman in Baghdad, said it would make "an incredible difference ... if the high-profile car bombs can be stopped or brought down to a much lower level". But the official warned that the bombers would remain difficult to stop until the mood of the population changed, and that would come, if at all, at the end of the operation.
While those conducting the operation stress the need for patience, the risk is that US troop losses will rise, strengthening the campaign in Washington for a pullout date to be set. So far this month 44 American soldiers have been killed, on course to match the 80 deaths in February and 83 in January. The belief in Baghdad, said the official, was that the US public would tolerate the losses, as long as there was a perception of progress being made: "What they hate are not lives lost, but lives wasted."
But the political side of the "surge" plan is going badly, according to the Pentagon and others. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is showing little enthusiasm for American attempts to reverse one of their own worst mistakes: the "de-Baathification" of the old regime, which removed thousands of Sunni military commanders and pushed them into the insurgency.
"In one sentence," the official concluded, "my take on the current situation is: 'Right strategy, great team, possibly too late.'"
A nation in ruins
2,000,000 Iraqis now live outside Iraq, according to UNHCR
12,000 doctors have fled Iraq since the war began. Another 2,000 are said to have been killed, and at least 250 kidnapped
50% Average inflation in 2006, according to the World Bank
6.3 hours of electricity daily in Baghdad in December 2006. In May 2003 there were 16-24 hours
32 percentage of people in Iraq with drinkable water
3,700,000 Iraqis now receive food aid from the UN World Food Programme
16% Proportion of Iraqis who said in January that their income meets their basic needs
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