The Anbar report

Michael Gordon follows up on the Tom Ricks piece yesterday about Marine Col. Peter Devlin's pesimistic report on the situation in Anbar province.

The political and security situation in western Iraq is grim and will continue to deteriorate unless the region receives a major infusion of aid and a division is sent to reinforce the American troops operating there, according to the senior Marine intelligence officer in Iraq.

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Marine commanders have been mounting a campaign to secure the province in the face of a virulent insurgency. But they have had to cope with seriously short-handed Iraqi Army units and a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad that has tended to view the area as a low priority for government spending and programs.

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One factor that has hampered the American counterinsurgency effort has been the limited number of American troops. As a general rule, a substantial number of troops are required in a counterinsurgency campaign to protect the population from attacks and intimidation by insurgent groups.

There are about 30,000 marines, soldiers, airmen and sailors in Anbar, a region that borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and is roughly the size of Louisiana.

American forces can generally maneuver where they want and are fighting to regain control of Ramadi, the provincial capital, neighborhood by neighborhood. But there are areas of the province where the Americans have not established a persistent presence, the assessment says.

Without the deployment of an additional division, “there is nothing MNF-W can do to influence the motivation of the Sunni to wage an insurgency,” the report states, according to a military officer familiar with it. MNF-W stands for Multinational Force-West, the formal name of the Marine command. A division numbers about 16,000 troops. The limited number of troops, however, is just one problem in countering the insurgency there, the report says. The assessment describes Anbar as a region marked by violence and criminality. Except for a few relatively bright spots, like the towns of Falluja and Qaim, the region generally lacks functional governments and a respect for the rule of law.

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This assessment sounds credible, based on the many news reports I have seen coming out of Anbar and Ramadi, in particular. While last year, several actions were taken to cut off the rat lines from Syria, this year the military has gone over to the "soft" approach providing presences and responding to attacks, but not aggressively eliminating the enemy.

It appears to be mainly a holding action while waiting for the Iraqis to take over, but they have shown little inclination or ability to do so. It is also not clear why forces elsewhere in Iraq where the Iraqis have taken over have not been sent to join the Marines in Anbar so that the job can be finished there. There is clearly a force to space short fall in the area. While the enemy is too weak to prevent US units from operating, we do not have sufficient forces to eliminate him.

Update: Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer responds Fallujah:

Recent media reports fail to accurately capture the entirety and complexity of the current situation in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq. The classified assessment, which has been referred to in these reports, was intended to focus on the causes of the insurgency. It was not intended to address the positive effects Coalition and Iraqi forces have achieved on the security environment over the past years.

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Despite these consistent advances in the security environment, we have found making the same progress politically and economically, throughout all of Anbar, to be much more challenging. In areas where the presence of Iraqi Security Forces is combined with an effective local civil government, we have seen progress made. Not just in the area of security, but in economic development and the establishment of social order and public services. These are the conditions which must be set that will result in the support of the local people, and ultimately cause the defeat of this terrorist backed insurgency.

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That is the work that must be done in the area. The question is whether the governement in Baghdad will commit the resources needed before the violence Baghdad is reduced.