U.S. Will Shift From Fighting to Training

U.S. military commanders increasingly believe that American troops will never entirely defeat Iraqi insurgents and now plan to reduce offensive operations and focus on training Iraqi security forces.

Under the plan, expected to be launched after the nation’s Jan. 30 parliamentary election, up to half of the U.S. troops in Iraq eventually could be enlisted to train police officers, national guard troops and other forces, said a senior military official in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In recent interviews, officials in Baghdad and at the Pentagon have acknowledged that the insurgency remains potent and resilient despite sustained U.S. assaults. Although U.S. commanders have long said that training Iraqi forces is an important aspect of securing the country, the planned shift in focus reflects a new, sober assessment by top military and Bush administration officials.

Offensive operations “are not the long-term solution. The long-term solution is with the Iraqis,” a senior administration official said. “Training Iraqis is the whole nine yards right now. If they don’t get better, we can’t get out of there.”

After the U.S. cleared fighters from the insurgent stronghold of Fallouja in November, American officials were optimistic that the offensive in the Sunni Muslim city had irreparably damaged the guerrilla organizations that targeted both U.S. and Iraqi troops. Marine Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler said at the time that the intense Fallouja campaign had “broken the back” of the insurgency.

Yet the violence in the weeks since then has proved that Iraqi insurgents remain capable of a sustained, organized and lethal campaign.

“There were some people who absolutely wanted to believe” that the Fallouja offensive had defeated the insurgency, said Kalev Sepp of the Naval Postgraduate School, who during the November offensive was a counterinsurgency advisor to Army Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. “But there was no evidence that had occurred.”

In recent public statements, including one Monday by Casey, U.S. commanders in Iraq have offered a graver assessment of the insurgents’ strength. Although operations last fall in such restive locales as Samarra, Fallouja and the northern part of Babil province were deemed successful, the subsequent surge in violence in previously placid cities such as Mosul -- outside of which a suicide bomber killed 22 people at an American base Dec. 21 -- has shown that the fighters are able to relocate to areas where the U.S. has fewer forces.

This is evidence, officials said, that operations planned and executed by U.S. troops can never wipe out the insurgency.

“The day after the elections, the insurgency will still be there,” said a senior military official in Baghdad. “And it will continue for several years to come.”

U.S. commanders also are concerned that when the Iraqi election is over and new leaders are in place, U.S. forces will have less authority to launch offensives that might anger Sunni Arabs -- a group the new government is likely to try to win over.

Members of the minority form the backbone of support for the insurgency, and the nation’s Shiite Muslim majority is expected to gain power in the election.

Officials said that Casey, who was drawing up the plans to refocus troops toward training, also hoped to define benchmarks for when each major city in the country could be turned over to Iraqi forces. Yet they caution that it is difficult to predict the level of violence after the election.

“It would be tough to set timelines right now,” the senior military official said.

With the voting less than two weeks away, it is unclear how much U.S. commanders will be able to step back from combat operations in the near term. In the weeks before the hand-over of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government June 28, some generals in Iraq said they were planning to garrison U.S. troops and give Iraqis a more prominent role in their own security. But insurgent attacks over the summer kept U.S. troops on the front lines.

With the focus on offensive operations throughout the Sunni heartland in recent months, officials in Washington and Baghdad are concerned that too little attention has been paid to training the Iraqis.

This month, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld dispatched retired Army Gen. Gary E. Luck to Iraq to assess the capabilities of Iraqi forces.

The Pentagon wants to train about 135,000 police, 62,000 national guardsmen and 24,000 army troops. According to figures released last week, there are about 53,000 police officers, 40,000 national guard members and 4,000 soldiers “trained and on hand.”

Mass defections of Iraqi troops are still frequent. In the northern city of Mosul, the 4th Brigade of the Iraqi national guard has lost 50% of its personnel, according to a U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad.

In November, thousands of police officers in Mosul fled after insurgents overran their stations. That force has yet to be reconstituted.

“In terms of [training] police, it’s definitely an uphill battle,” said Army Lt. Col. Emmett Schaill of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division in Mosul.

The focus on training after the election, Schaill said, is meant to bolster Iraqis for an eventual transfer of authority. “It’s a transition to empower them,” he said.

Even as these plans are being developed, the U.S. timetable to restore “local control” to Iraqi cities in time for the election has slipped, and U.S. troops are scrambling to secure Iraq’s most violent areas.

During the summer, American commanders mapped out a series of offensives designed to push insurgents back and allow U.S. troops to hand Iraqis the responsibility for security in Sunni-dominated cities.

Military officials established a deadline of last month for restoring local control. They now say that such violent places as Fallouja, Ramadi and Mosul will not be overseen by Iraqi forces on election day.

Even after giving authority to Iraqi troops, U.S. commanders plan to have thousands of American troops advise the nascent forces, bolstering their confidence and, they hope, reducing defections.

This plan grew out of the realization that even the most competent Iraqi troops would need U.S. assistance into the future and that many obstacles remained before U.S. commanders could consider reducing the military presence in Iraq.

In other words, a Defense Department official said, “ ‘local control’ these days doesn’t mean the same thing it did three months ago.”

Times staff writer Louise Roug in Mosul contributed to this report.