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Sunday, Jun. 28, 2009

American troops in Iraq fade from major cities

BAGHDAD — The last American patrol in Baghdad?

The 75-minute hike was walked Saturday night in the northwest sector of the capital. Armored and armed, 10 U.S. soldiers, two Iraqi national police officers and two interpreters moved past the Sadamiya shrine, one of the holiest spots in Islam, and on to the Tigris River.

It may well have been the last patrol before the deadline for U.S. combat forces to withdraw from major American cities.

Or maybe not.

The patrol from Camp Justice came from the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, based in Fort Riley, Kan. It included the two Iraqi policemen as a sign that they and the Iraqi army will now assume the main security role in Iraq.

But the Status of Forces Agreement setting the June 30 deadline leaves a lot of discretionary decisions to the Americans. Lieut. Col. Drake Jackson, 39, a liaison officer with the Iraqi police, could have termed the patrol a "force protection" mission, not a "combined patrol." In that case, only Americans would've been walking the route.

That's one reason on Tuesday, when Iraqis wake up, they will still see U.S. soldiers and Marines on patrol and in convoys. That's why some Iraqis — like the one who yelled at the patrol, "Hey, it's too bad you guys will be leaving soon!" — may be disappointed with the profile, the footprint, that the Americans will still display in Iraq.

To be sure, that footprint will be much less visible than ever before in the past six years. Ever since December 2008, when Gen. Ray Odierno sent a letter to all units explaining the new transition rules, the U.S. military has been gearing down and pulling back from its long-standing forward positions.

The Dagger Brigade, as it's nicknamed, at Camp Justice now numbers only around 250 soldiers, down from 800 just three weeks ago. Iraqi army and police forces in that politically sensitive and religiously vital sector total about 106,000, three times as many as the U.S. In Karkh, another area of operations for the brigade, 4,000 soldiers in an armored brigade have been slashed to an armored unit of 60 U.S. soldiers.

"We've been in the hand-off phase ever since we got here," says Major Kone Faulkner, of the 1st Infantry Division. "The baton has been going to them the whole time. I'm not sure when they got it, but they got it."

Iraqi officials agree. "It's a turning point of Iraq and Iraqi history," says Gen. Dahfur, commander of the 22nd Brigade of the 6th National Police Battalion. "I want to state to the American people that June 30 is a victor for Iraq and America."

But at least in some cases, the pullback won't be far over the horizon. The 2nd Brigade, for instance, has relocated its forces only five to seven miles from their original bases, back to Camp Victory in southwest Baghdad. Other U.S. units across Iraq will indeed disappear from urban landscapes, settling in giant forward operating bases.

And if Iraqi forces get in trouble, all they have to do is ask. The American's quick reaction forces are poised to provide many kinds of help, from bomb-sniffing dogs to unmanned aircraft surveillance to helicopter gunships.

As the spasms of violence over the last two weeks have shown, insurgents in the country are trying to disrupt the pullout. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed and many more wounded. Those efforts to derail the withdrawal have begun to fan the embers of sectarian strife, which cast Iraq into a low-grade civil war in 2006-07.