United States President George Bush will this week announce a renewed reconstruction package for Iraq costing up to $1-billion and a fresh push by a reinforced Iraqi army to quell the insurgency in Baghdad to sweeten the pill of his decision to dispatch up to 20 000 more US soldiers to the fray.
Bush’s determination to reject the advice of the Baker-Hamilton review, which recommended a gradual withdrawal, continues to cause deep unease both in military and Congressional circles.
In a speech on Wednesday, Bush will give details of a deal thrashed out last week between him and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, in which the US troop increase of up to five combat brigades, on top of the 130 000 personnel already on the ground, would be matched by a rise in Iraqi army numbers.
Three more Iraqi brigades are to be sent to Baghdad over the next weeks. Two of those brigades will be made up of peshmerga fighters from the Kurdish north of the country, which is likely to prompt questions about their effectiveness. Kurdish leaders have shown a desire to remain outside the sectarian violence escalating between Sunni and Shia communities to the south.
The other sweetener will be a doubling of reconstruction efforts. Up to $1-billion is to be spent on a programme in which Iraqis are employed to clean the streets and repair and paint schools.
The Pentagon-run scheme would try to draw young men away from insurgent groups and back into the mainstream economy. It would be administered by officials embedded in US combat brigades in a bid to persuade Iraqis that the Americans were there as a force for good and not just of occupation.
Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, who took up the post of commander of US combat forces in Iraq a month ago, said the new military operation could see Iraqi government forces in control of the capital within a year, and the overall mission accomplished within two or three years.
Reservations
Other experts expressed reservations about continuing on a course that had been tried and had failed. ”I don’t know that the Iraqi government has ever demonstrated ability to lead the country, and we shouldn’t be surprised,” said Lieutenant General Jay Garner, who led the US mission in Baghdad after the invasion.
The Bush strategy is certain to bring the president into collision with the new Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, which is committed to reducing the US presence in Iraq. Nancy Pelosi, who was anointed Speaker of the House of Representatives last week, said on Sunday the Democrats would subject to scrutiny any request by the president for funds to support troop reinforcements.
”If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request, we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now,” she said in a television interview.
Pelosi’s emphasis on the distinction between funds for existing troops and reinforcements is significant because it suggests how the Democrats may seek a way out of the bind in which they are.
On the one hand, their only way of opposing Bush’s plans directly is to vote down the budget; on the other hand, they do not want to be seen to be anti-military.
Pelosi and the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, last week wrote to Bush saying they were opposed to the idea of troop increases and that soldiers should begin to be brought home as early as in four months’ time.
The two-pronged approach of increased combat capacity backed by an attempt to boost jobs for civilians is in keeping with the thinking of the general appointed last week to head the US military effort in Iraq, Lieutenant General David Petraeus.
He is a recognised authority on counter-insurgency, but he also acquired a reputation for his understanding of civilian relations during a previous tour to Mosul in the north of the country. — Guardian Unlimited Â