Up next in Iraq: a civilian front

WASHINGTON —

As the U.S. military prepares to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, the Obama administration is planning a remarkable civilian effort, buttressed by a small army of contractors, to fill the void.

By October 2011, the State Department will assume responsibility for training the Iraqi police, a task that will largely be carried out by contractors. With no U.S. soldiers to defuse sectarian tensions in northern Iraq, it will be up to U.S. diplomats in two new $100 million outposts to head off potential confrontations between the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

To protect civilians in a country that is still home to insurgents with al-Qaida and Iranian-backed militias, the State Department is planning to more than double its private security guards, up to as many as 7,000, according to administration officials who disclosed new details of the plan.

Defending five fortified compounds across the country, the security contractors would operate radar to warn of enemy rocket attacks, search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones and staff quick-reaction forces to aid civilians in distress, the officials said.

"I don't think State has ever operated on its own, independent of the U.S. military, in an environment that is quite as threatening on such a large scale," said James Dobbins, a former ambassador who has seen his share of trouble spots as a special envoy for Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo and Somalia. "It is unprecedented in scale."

Confidence — and doubt

Obama administration officials expressed confidence that the transfer to civilians — about 2,400 people who would work at the Baghdad embassy and other diplomatic sites — would be carried out on schedule and that they could fulfill their mission of helping bring stability to Iraq.

"The really big picture that we have seen in Iraq over the last year and a half to two years is this: The number of violent incidents is significantly down, the competence of Iraqi security forces is significantly up and politics has emerged as the basic way of doing business in Iraq," said Antony Blinken, national-security adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden. "If that trend continues, and I acknowledge it is an 'if,' that creates a much better context for dealing with the very significant and serious problems that remain in Iraq."

The tiny military presence under the Obama administration's plan — limited to several dozen to several hundred officers in an embassy office who would help the Iraqis purchase and field new U.S. military equipment — and the civilians' growing portfolio have led some veteran Iraq hands to suggest thousands of additional troops would be needed after 2011.

"We need strategic patience here," said Ryan Crocker, who served as ambassador in Iraq from 2007 until early 2009. "Our timetables are getting out ahead of Iraqi reality. ... We certainly are not the ones making unilateral decisions anymore. But if they come to us later on this year requesting that we jointly relook at the post-2011 period, it is going to be in our strategic interest to be responsive."

The array of tasks that military experts and some Iraqi officials think U.S. troops likely will be needed for include training Iraqi forces to operate and support logistically new M-1 tanks, artillery and F-16s they intend to acquire from the Americans, protecting Iraq's airspace until the country can rebuild its air force and perhaps assisting Iraq's special-operations units in carrying out counterterrorism operations.

Such an arrangement would need to be negotiated with Iraqi officials, who insisted on the 2011 deadline in the agreement with the Bush administration for removing U.S. forces.

Touchy topic

With the Obama administration in campaign mode for the coming midterm elections and Iraqi politicians yet to form a government, the question of what future military presence might be needed has been all but banished from public discussion.

"The administration does not want to touch this question right now," said one administration official involved in Iraq issues, adding that military officers had suggested 5,000 to 10,000 troops might be needed. "It runs counter to their political argument that we are getting out of these messy places," added the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Obama administration had committed itself to reducing U.S. troops in Iraq to 50,000 by the end of August, a goal officials on Wednesday said would be met.

Administration officials and experts outside government said, however, that implementing the agreement that calls for removing all U.S. forces by the end of 2011 will be far more challenging.

The progress or difficulties in transferring responsibility to the civilians will influence events in Iraq and provide a test case for the Obama administration's longer-term strategy in Afghanistan.

One U.S. official said more than 1,200 specific tasks carried out by the U.S. military in Iraq had been identified to be handed over to civilians, transferred to the Iraqis or phased out.

To move around Iraq without U.S. troops, the State Department plans to acquire 60 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, called MRAPs, from the Pentagon; expand its inventory of armored cars to 1,320; and create a mini-air fleet by buying three planes to add to its lone aircraft. Its helicopter fleet, which will be piloted by contractors, will grow to 29 choppers from 17.

Tricky tasks

The department's plans to rely on 6,000 to 7,000 security contractors, who are also expected to form "quick-reaction forces" to rescue civilians in trouble, is a sensitive issue, given Iraqi fury about shootings of civilians by U.S. private guards in recent years.

Administration officials said security contractors would have no special immunity and would be required to register with the Iraqi government. In addition, one of the State Department's regional security officers, agents who oversee security at diplomatic outposts, will be required to approve and accompany every civilian convoy.

The startup cost of building and sustaining two embassy branch offices, one in Kirkuk and the other in Mosul, of hiring security contractors, buying new equipment and setting up two consulates, in Basra and Irbil, is about $1 billion. It will cost an additional $500 million or so to make the two consulates permanent. Getting the police-training program started will cost about $800 million.

Among the trickiest missions for the civilians will be dealing with lingering Kurdish and Arab tensions. To tamp down potential conflicts in disputed areas, Gen. Ray Odierno, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, established a series of checkpoints made up of U.S. soldiers, Iraqi army troops and Peshmerga fighters. But those checkpoints may be phased out when the U.S. troops leave. Instead, the United States is counting on the new embassy branch offices.

Crocker said that however capable the State Department was in carrying out its tasks, it was important for the U.S. military to keep enough of a presence in Iraq to encourage Iraq's generals to stay out of politics.

"If military commanders start asking themselves, 'Why are we fighting and dying to hold this country together while the civilians fiddle away our future?' — that can get dangerous."