Baghdad, Iraq – Iraqi security forces will need another year to 18 months before they can take over for American troops, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey Jr., said Wednesday.
The assessment, which came on a day when at least 78 people were killed or found dead across Iraq, drove home a growing realization that U.S. troops will stay longer and in greater numbers in Iraq than once anticipated by ground commanders and the Bush administration.
“I don’t have a date, but I can see over the next 12 to 18 months the Iraqi security forces progressing to a point where they can take on the security responsibilities for the country, with very little coalition support,” Casey told reporters in Baghdad.
He would not commit to a U.S. drawdown after that date, saying it depended on the security situation in the country.
“We’ll adjust that as we go,” Casey said, referring to U.S. troop levels in the country. “But a lot of that, in fact the future coalition presence, 12 to 18 months from now, is going to be decided by the Iraqi government.”
Last year, Casey said “significant” troop withdrawals could take place soon after the Iraqi elections that December.
Casey and other top commanders said at the time they were prepared to recommend a drawdown of 30,000 troops by the spring, if the election and training of security forces went well.
The start of reductions was delayed by an outbreak of civil warfare, but Casey said in May that his “general timeline” was still on track. In June, Casey predicted “gradual reductions” in U.S. troop levels over the following year.
But by last month, generals began shelving plans for troop cuts this year and instead ordered extensions of combat tours as violence worsened.
Many experts in Washington read Casey’s comments as code for when the U.S. would be able to begin drawing down its forces. Retired Gen. William Nash, who led U.S. Army forces in Bosnia, said that given the amount of time the U.S. already has spent training the Iraqi military, Casey’s timeline is reasonable.
“My point is: By God, I hope we would be getting close by then,” Nash said.
Earlier this week, the U.S. military called in airstrikes to support besieged Iraqi soldiers fighting Shiite militias in a vicious 12-hour street battle in the southern city of Diwaniyah.
At least 100 troops in an Iraqi battalion balked at fighting their co-religionists and refused to deploy to the battle, an act their British trainers have called a mutiny.
Casey said that confidence in the security forces is key to dismantling the militias. But the Iraqi government has taken few concrete steps to disarm or dismantle them, and their members have infiltrated the security forces, where they have been accused of forming death squads.
About 8,000 U.S. troops and 3,000 Iraqi soldiers have flooded sections of the capital, including several that had been turned over to Iraqi forces this spring. Military officials say the increased patrols and searches have lowered Baghdad’s record homicide rate, which soared to 1,800 in July.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki touted the drop in the homicide rate as evidence of “an atmosphere of reconciliation” in an interview with CNN Sunday.
But the week that followed showed little reconciliation, and August is now ending on a bloody note. Since Sunday, at least 317 people have been killed countrywide – 126 of them in the capital.
Americans have not been spared. The U.S. military said Wednesday that a Marine from the 1st Armored Division was killed in action on Tuesday in Anbar province. Military officials also said two U.S. soldiers had been killed in an attack on a Stryker vehicle on Sunday in western Baghdad, not four as had been reported earlier. The total number of U.S. forces killed that day remained at nine, though.
So far this month, 60 U.S. service members have been killed in Iraq, up from 43 in July and nearly even with the 61 killed in June, according to Coalition Casualty Count, a website that tracks military fatalities.
In all, 2,362 American men and women in uniform have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war, according to the Defense Department.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
