Most US troops to leave central Baghdad
BAGHDAD -- The US-led occupation plans to shift control of this war-stricken city center to Iraqi forces soon and move most US troops to the capital's perimeter, military officials said yesterday.
"Unless you give them a chance to practice their skills, to go out there and face things on their own, then you never know what they can do," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was visiting Baghdad for the third time since the war began. "But clearly it's better for us if they are on the front lines, and it's better for them and it's better for their country."
US commanders and officials with the US-led civilian administration outlined their plans to a small group of reporters accompanying Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war. It was Wolfowitz's first visit to the capital since Oct. 26, when insurgents fired rockets at the Al Rashid Hotel, where he was staying.
Wolfowitz said yesterday that Iraqi forces would prove more effective than their US counterparts in combating guerrilla forces like those that had bombed two Kurdish political party headquarters earlier in the day.
Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, the top US commander in Baghdad, said the shift to the Iraqi military would begin during the rotation of 250,000 US troops in the next few months.
The United States will reduce the number of US operating bases in Baghdad and move most to the outskirts before the First Armored Division hands over security in April to the incoming First Cavalry Division from Fort Hood, Texas. In northern Iraq, three brigades of the 101st Airborne Division will be replaced Thursday by a single Second Division brigade from Fort Lewis, Wash.
The diminishing profile of US forces is part of a Pentagon-approved effort to cede the leading role in security to Iraqi troops. Senior coalition officials acknowledged yesterday that even if a representative Iraqi government took over as planned this summer, it would remain unable to control security.
US troop numbers are expected to remain near their current level, officials said.
"The occupying forces will move from being occupying forces to being invited forces in partnership, in some ways, with the Iraqis in defense of their country until such time as their security forces can do it themselves," a senior civilian coalition official in Baghdad said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The effort to transfer authority is most evident in Baghdad. The number of forward operating bases from which troops watch over the city has shrunk from 44, when First Armored troops took over the city from the Third Infantry Division last May, to 26.
Dempsey plans to cut that number to eight by the time new troops assume control April 15.
"As they became more capable, it made sense for us to cede the security challenge to them," Dempsey said at the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Baghdad. "And so we began building base camps for our successors that were outside the city, on the perimeter of the city, so that when our successors came in behind us they would be on the outside looking in."
The shifting of overall control of the capital is likely to take months. Military strategists estimate that Baghdad needs 19,000 Iraqi police officers. It now has 8,000, and US forces are training as many as 2,000 each month.
