US defence secretary visits Iraq as Ramadi counter-offensive looms
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Version 0 of 1. The US defence secretary, Ash Carter, has made a surprise visit to Baghdad to assess the government’s progress in healing Iraq’s sectarian divisions and to discuss support for a planned attempt by the Iraqi army to retake the city of Ramadi from Islamic State. It is Carter’s first visit to Iraq since he took office in February. He is not expected to announce any major change in US strategy or an increase in US troop levels. The approximately 3,360 troops stationed in the country are largely involved in training Iraqi troops and advising commanders on battle plans, as well as providing security for US personnel and facilities. The US, joined by several coalition partners, is also conducting daily air strikes to chip away at Isis’s grip on large parts of Iraq. The visit, however, comes at an important moment for the Iraqi government, which has announced a counter-offensive to retake Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province. The assault on the city has not yet begun, but a Pentagon spokesman, Colonel Steve Warren, said it could start within several weeks. The Ramadi campaign will be a crucial test not only for the Iraqi government, led by prime minister Haider al-Abadi, but also for the US strategy of relying on Iraqi security forces, operating in coordination with US-led air strikes, to overcome the smaller Isis forces. The US president, Barack Obama, has refused to commit ground forces to Iraq, saying the only lasting solution is for Iraq to fight for itself. Related: US-led coalition warplanes drop new leaflets over Isis stronghold in Syria American military leaders have said they would recommend that Obama approve moving US military advisers, and perhaps special operations forces, closer to the frontline if they believed it would make a decisive difference at certain stages of the Iraqi campaign. But Warren said no such recommendation has yet been made. Obama’s critics in Congress complain that he is missing an opportunity to swiftly defeat Isis by not sending ground troops, or at least by not placing military advisers with Iraqi units to make them more effective. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, who visited Iraq last weekend, supports Obama’s approach. He told a congressional hearing on 7 July that he realises Isis’s threat to the US could increase as a result of what he called a patient approach in Iraq and Syria. “But I also would suggest to you that we would contribute mightily to Isil’s [Isis] message as a movement were we to confront them directly on the ground in Iraq and Syria,” he said, alluding to the risk of enhancing the group’s ability to recruit fighters. After Iraqi troops abandoned Ramadi in early May, handing Isis its biggest battlefield victory of 2015, Carter caused a stir in Iraq when he said its army “just showed no will to fight”. Carter noted then that the Iraqi forces were not outnumbered in Ramadi, yet they abandoned their weapons and equipment, including dozens of American-supplied tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and artillery pieces. These became part of Isis’s arsenal and were then targeted in US air strikes. Isis will again be outnumbered when the Iraqi army makes a renewed assault on Ramadi. Warren, who is travelling with Carter, said there are between 1,000 and 2,000 Isis fighters in the city. He would not say how many Iraqi troops are likely to be involved in the counter-offensive, but he said there are “several thousand” available in the area. The US accelerated and expanded its training effort in Anbar province earlier this summer, but Warren said that none of the Iraqi troops currently available for the counter-offensive were among the nearly 7,000 Iraqi soldiers who have had US training. He said the government has deployed those trainees elsewhere in the country, although he did not rule out that they might be added to the Ramadi force. Related: Iraq launches new offensive to drive Isis from Anbar province Warren said Iraqi security forces are cutting off avenues of Isis supply and reinforcement around the city. “We are beginning to isolate Ramadi from multiple directions,” Warren said, “to place a noose around the city.” At a later stage – the timing of which he would not predict – the assault phase of the campaign would begin. The loss of Ramadi was a major setback for Iraq, not just for the territory given up but for the psychological blow it inflicted on the security forces, whose confidence was already low. It also meant a delay in the push to retake a city of even greater strategic importance – Mosul, in northern Iraq. Mosul has been in Isis’s hands since June 2014. When Carter became Pentagon chief in February, replacing Chuck Hagel, US military officials were talking openly about hoping the Iraqis would march on the city by May. Those hopes had faded even before Ramadi fell. Still, the current focus on recapturing Ramadi will eventually have to move on to Mosul and other parts of western and northern Iraq if Obama’s vision of empowering a unified Iraq is to become reality. |