Iraqis controlling more territory

WASHINGTON — President Bush's objective of turning over most of Iraq to Iraqi troops by the end of the year appears achievable given recent progress in training new security forces, but even if he meets the goal it would not necessarily mean the end of the war was in sight, military analysts said Tuesday.

In an effort to turn the fight over to Iraqis, the U.S. military increasingly has been shifting territory to local forces in recent weeks, tripling what officers call "Iraqi-owned battle space" since the beginning of the year. Baghdad has been largely transferred to Iraqi forces as well as swaths to the east of the capital and disputed areas around the northern city of Mosul.

Yet even those Iraqi forces still require U.S. military assistance, and administration officials warned against assuming that U.S. troops could come home simply because Iraqis take more of the lead in the war. Moreover, because much of the insurgency has been concentrated in four provinces, Iraqi forces could theoretically control the majority of the country without eliminating the bloody resistance to the U.S.-supported government.

"It's not only sensible but doable because it's happening already," Michael O'Hanlon, a defense scholar at the Brookings Institution, said of Bush's year-end target. But he added, "It's important for America, and the president, not to misunderstand: Even if Iraqis have primary jurisdiction over most of the country, it doesn't mean our responsibilities are finished. It just means that day-to-day responsibilities are in their hands. But we'll still need to be there as backup, and backup could take a long time."

Bush outlined his target in a speech Monday kicking off a new effort to assuage an anxious U.S. public that progress is being made in Iraq despite waves of bombings and killings.

In a further sign of concern about the Iraq war, lawmakers from both parties are to announce today the start of a new independent study aimed at assessing the way ahead. The study group consisting of five Republicans and five Democrats will be led by former secretary of state James Baker and former representative Lee Hamilton, D-Ind.

The U.S.-led coalition began turning over territory to Iraqi forces in August but has accelerated that lately. Just a month ago, a Pentagon report said Iraqi security forces were responsible for 12,000 square miles of Iraq. Now the White House said they control 30,000 square miles. In a country of nearly 169,000 square miles, Iraqi forces would need to control about 85,000 to fulfill Bush's target. But neither Bush nor military officials have tied this achievement to any imminent troop reductions.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a member of the Armed Services Committee and a critic of the administration's approach, challenged the relevancy of using territory to measure success. "Controlling terrain doesn't imply that you're rooting out the insurgency," he said. "You can control some of the terrain, but the insurgents still operate. That's essentially what's happening today."

If areas with little insurgent activity, such as the Kurdish north or Shiite south, are included, then he said it would have even less significance. "The real areas are the contested areas in the Sunni Triangle" in central Iraq, Reed said.

Kalev Sepp, who helped develop the U.S. counterterrorism strategy in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, said Bush's goal has the advantage of being "very graphic" and "probably would be encouraging to the Iraqis themselves."

Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the larger problem is that Iraqi security forces are dominated by Shiites and assigning them territory would only increase the prospect of civil war. "It represents a misreading of the nature of the problem," he said. "When we make these forces stronger we make the underlying problem worse, not better. We're throwing gas on the political fire."