More U.S. troops headed to Iraq; cuts this year may be less likely

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Pentagon's hopes to make substantial reductions in U.S. troop levels in Iraq this year appear to be fading as a result of resurgent violence in the country, particularly in the Sunni Arab stronghold of Anbar province, military officials acknowledge.

Army Gen. George Casey, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, announced Tuesday that he was moving 1,500 reserve troops that had been held in Kuwait to Anbar, the restive western region that includes the war-torn cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

Pentagon officials insisted publicly Tuesday that the move to temporarily bolster forces was unconnected to Casey's pending recommendation on overall troop levels, now expected to come sometime next month following a series of delays. But other officers have privately acknowledged the worsening situation in Anbar — particularly in Ramadi, which U.S. officials acknowledge is now under insurgent control — is likely to prevent any significant drawdown this year.

Since the beginning of this year, military commanders have said political progress and the advancing Iraqi military may allow for substantial U.S. troop reductions, from more than 130,000 now to 100,000 or below. But one senior officer privy to Iraq planning discussions, who requested anonymity when talking about internal Pentagon debates, said "there's a growing realization" that ongoing violence is hampering withdrawal plans.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a hint of that realization last week when, after a meeting with Casey, he said he expected insurgents to "test" the new Iraqi government "very, very strongly" in the coming months. Blair and President Bush, meeting at the White House last week, put off any announcement on reducing troops.

Ramadi remains the area of most concern, military officials in Iraq and Washington said. Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, a senior planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that Ramadi is "probably the most contentious city right now inside Iraq," adding there are suspicions Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organization, al-Qaida in Iraq, may be trying to establish a "safe haven" in the city.

Signs that al-Zarqawi-linked groups have taken over the city have been growing. One by one, Sunni sheiks with ties to nationalist rebels, who earlier in the year vowed to fight radical Islamic insurgents in Anbar province and Ramadi, have been assassinated, a sign they are losing the internecine fight.

Tribal leaders describe Ramadi as "lawless"; American troops are unable to stop the gunmen who threaten and kill local residents, they say. U.S. forces in the city, which are being led by a National Guard brigade, remain hunkered down in the battle-scarred downtown government center and come under large-scale attacks almost daily.

After repeated attacks on officers and recruits, the city has no effective Iraqi police force.

Despite Ramadi's growing emergence as an insurgent stronghold, military officials said the move of new troops to Anbar was a short-term deployment, part of an effort to "facilitate and assist" existing Iraqi forces in the area, rather than a prelude to an offensive similar to 2004's attack on nearby Fallujah, which at the time had become a safe haven for rebels.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, also said that while Anbar remained a "challenge," it did not reflect the security situation in the rest of Iraq. The Pentagon's congressionally mandated quarterly status report on Iraq, published Tuesday, showed that 81 percent of all attacks over the past three months were in four central-Iraqi provinces, including Anbar, while the rest remained comparatively peaceful.

In Tuesday's report, the Pentagon said the "rejectionists" who are a key element of the insurgency are holding their own against U.S. and Iraqi forces. It also said for the first time that the Sunnis who reject the U.S.-backed government are collaborating with al-Qaida. It said a separate element of the insurgency that U.S. officials describe as former loyalists of the Saddam Hussein regime remains an important enabler of the violence in Iraq. But the Saddam loyalists have "mostly splintered" into other groups.

The report also said that while security in much of Iraq has improved, total attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces have increased in recent months, following the Feb. 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

Residents of Ramadi have detected an intensified effort by U.S. forces to wrest control of the city's streets from insurgents in recent days. According to one Sunni sheik from the province, U.S. forces have stepped up bombing raids in the past week and a half, and have been more aggressive on the ground. Residents have begun to leave.

If military commanders decide to launch a large-scale offensive in Ramadi, it may have to wait until the new government in Baghdad is more firmly in place. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has yet to appoint a defense or interior minister, and one U.S. intelligence official said coalition officers refrained from launching a large-scale operation because of opposition from the preceding interim government.

An attack on Ramadi would likely mean a delay in any large-scale withdrawal from Iraq, forcing U.S. commanders to draw on significant manpower to clear out — and then stabilize — the surrounding region, as well as to prepare contingencies for any backlash elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle.

"You can't do that and withdraw at the same time," another military officer said.

Additional information about the Pentagon report from The Associated Press