President George Bush on Tuesday agreed to send more United States troops into Baghdad to help the Iraqi government of Nuri al-Maliki curb the escalating violence now claiming an estimated 100 lives a day.
The US troops will be redeployed from other areas of Iraq where Bush said progress is being made, and will be sent into the capital alongside Iraqi government reinforcements, who will be given more and better equipment.
The announcement was made at a joint White House press conference attended by Bush and al-Maliki, who was making his first visit to Washington since becoming Iraqi prime minister two months ago.
Bush said the problems of Baghdad needed to be attended to. ”Obviously the violence in Baghdad is still terrible, and therefore there needs to be more troops,” he said.
The increased US involvement in Baghdad was an acknowledgement that an earlier plan to gain control of the city, announced by al-Maliki in mid-June and using mostly Iraqi troops, had failed to contain worsening sectarian bloodshed between Shia and Sunni militias.
The new Baghdad plan was negotiated by al-Maliki and General George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, but only formally announced on Tuesday. Al-Maliki said that the new plan would focus on the growing sectarian conflict.
”The most important element in the security plan is to curb the religious violence … That’s one of the main objectives,” the Iraqi prime minister said. ”And, God willing, there will be no civil war in Iraq.”
Daniel Gouré, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute thinktank, said that to prevent a full-blown civil war breaking out, the new Baghdad security plan would have to be more effective than the last.
”The first effort has failed and failed miserably because of a lack of adequate resources and troops and US forces,” Gouré said. ”This is no longer about insurgents, but about militias. We are in an incipient civil war.”
US and Iraqi officials have recognised in recent weeks that the violence between Shia and Sunni groups is now worse than the insurgency against US forces, and some Sunni leaders previously determined to drive out coalition troops, have begun calling on them to stay behind to protect them from Shia militants.
Some of the most lethal Shia militias are operating within the Iraqi government as death squads, but al-Maliki signalled a readiness to address the problem. ”It is the policy of the government: there is no killing or discrimination against anyone, everything is by law, and everything is based on the Constitution and the law,” he said. ”The government’s responsibility is to protect all Iraqis regardless of their ethnic or religious background.”
Part of the new strategy will be to beef up the Iraqi police and bolster its credibility with Baghdad residents.
”This plan will involve embedding more US military police with Iraqi police units to make them more effective,” Bush said. ”Our military commanders tell me that this deployment will better reflect the current conditions on the ground in Iraq. We also agreed that Iraqi security forces need better tools to do their job. And so we’ll work with them to equip them with greater mobility, fire power and protection.”
Gouré said that there was evidence to support the president’s claim. ”I’m hearing that it’s better in places like Ramadi, Fallujah and Mosul,” he said. ”The reports I’m getting is that the situation in the north and west is significantly better.”
”To the extent you can now control Baghdad even if you have an outgrowth of insurgency elsewhere, you will have brought an end to the sectarian killing. It’s a trade-off, but it’s worth it.” – Guardian Unlimited Â