Assessment suggests US occupation has a long future

Julian Borger in Washington and agencies in Baghdad

Friday July 22, 2005 - The Iraqi government's forces are nowhere near battle ready and only a small number are capable of fighting the insurgency on their own, according to a newly declassified Pentagon document.

The assessment, provided to the Senate by General Peter Pace, the newly appointed chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, paints a stark picture of Iraqi military readiness that contrasts with the Pentagon's upbeat official tone.

According to excerpts in US newspapers yesterday, Gen Pace said about half of Iraq's new police battalions were still being established and were not in a position to conduct operations. The other half of the police and two-thirds of the new Iraqi army battalions were only "partially capable" of carrying out counter-insurgency missions, and required US help.

"Only a small number of Iraqi security forces are taking on the insurgents and terrorists by themselves," Gen Pace wrote.

He has briefed the Senate armed services committee behind closed doors on the state of training in Iraq, but sent this seven-page declassified memo in response to a request by Senator Carl Levin for publicly available information.

George Bush has said that the US will withdraw its troops from Iraq only when Iraqi forces are ready to tackle the insurgency on their own. Senators subsequently demanded a set of benchmarks for assessing progress, and updates every 90 days.

According to Pentagon figures, there are 78,800 Iraqi troops and 94,100 police and paramilitary police. Another 100,000 are due to be trained by next summer, but US defence officials have so far resisted calls to assess their readiness for actual combat.

"The information we're getting is in large measure from the Iraqi security forces," Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, told reporters. "It's their information. It's not for us to tell the other side, the enemy, the terrorists, that this Iraqi unit has this capability and that Iraqi unit has this capability."

It would be "mindless" to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of Iraq's security forces.

Randy Gangle, a retired US marine colonel and a military consultant who has visited Iraq in the past year, said Gen Pace's assessment illustrated the problems of training forces in the midst of an insurgency.

"From everything I've heard and read about the state of things, it sounds about right. It's not progressing as rapidly as we would hope, but you look at how long it takes to train our forces here. It makes it very difficult over there."

There were no short-cuts. "To get proficiency it requires time. Everybody wishes you could speed it up, but its not going to happen."

In an effort to accelerate the improvement of Iraqi forces over the past few months, about 1,500 US troops have been seeded inside Iraqi units to live and work with Iraqi officers.

The Pentagon was due to present Congress with a comprehensive report on the Iraqi insurgency by July 11, but missed the deadline.

Mr Rumsfeld said the report, when delivered, would not include an estimate of how many US troops might be needed in Iraq next year, as Congress had asked. He has argued that those numbers are impossible to predict and will be determined by the strength of the insurgency and the speed of Iraqi training.

There are 138,000 American troops in Iraq, compared with a peak of about 160,000 during the January elections.

In Baghdad, the chief of Algeria's mission and another Algerian diplomat were dragged from their car and kidnapped yesterday in the latest attack aimed at undermining support among Arab states for the Iraqi government.

At least 17 people were killed in insurgent attacks, including two car bombings against Iraqi security forces.

No group claimed responsibility for the abduction of the Algerians, Ali Belaroussi and Azzedine Ben Kadi, who were seized along with their driver in west Baghdad. The kidnappings come three weeks after Egyptian diplomat Ihab al-Sherif was seized at gunpoint. Al-Qaida in Iraq later claimed to have killed him.

Meanwhile, efforts to complete a draft of the Iraqi constitution by the August 15 deadline remained deadlocked yesterday after Sunni Arab members said they would continue their boycott of the drafting committee.

Two Sunnis involved in drafting the constitution were gunned down on Tuesday, prompting others to suspend their participation pending better security. Kamal Hamdoun, one of the 12 remaining Sunnis appointed to the constitutional commission last month, said yesterday that the minority would continue its boycott until an international investigation into the killings had been launched and Sunnis received a greater voice in drafting the charter.

· Syria said its border troops had been fired on by US and Iraqi forces - the first time it has made such accusations.