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After the surge, what’s next for Iraq?

For U.S. troops, the final year of the Iraq war under the Bush administration will combine protection of the Iraqi populace, the pursuit of violent extremists, and continued intensive training of Iraq’s army and police forces so they can increasingly take the lead in their respective tasks.

Where that leaves the U.S. posture in Iraq is a big question mark — and will remain so at least until some time in March, when Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, will return to Washington to deliver his latest assessment of the situation on the ground.

Defense leaders say they are fairly certain that the ongoing withdrawal of the equivalent of five brigade combat teams President Bush sent to Iraq last year will continue through July.

“All the evidence available to me now suggests that we will be able to complete the drawdown,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at the Pentagon on Jan. 17.

To not do so would exacerbate the well-documented strain on the Army, whose nondeployed forces generally are considered to be in a less-than-ready state.

“How do you keep the numbers up?” said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who served as an assistant defense secretary under President Reagan. “You’re going to have to redeploy people who haven’t been home a year; you’re going to maybe extend the tours from 15 to 18 months. If General Petraeus says no, what will the Army chief of staff say?”

In addition to affecting the size of the U.S. force through the rest of 2008, the Petraeus assessment also will affect the Army’s ability to cut combat tours in the Middle East from 15 to 12 months. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey has said he hopes to be able to make that happen this summer; the final call is up to Gates.

However, the defense secretary says he does not want Petraeus to consider the big picture.

“I’ve asked General Petraeus to make his evaluation of the situation in Iraq and ... the needs and the situation on the ground, completely based on what’s going on in Iraq,” Gates said. “But he doesn’t need to look over his shoulder, think about stress on the force or anything else.”

He said he will get broader perspectives from U.S. Central Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Continue drawing down?

Bush previously has said he supports the drawdown plan and that the upcoming assessment from Petraeus will determine whether the U.S. should continue drawing down below the roughly 130,000 troops who will remain at that point.

But one analyst said he believes that at this point, a continued drawdown could be premature.

“I would be surprised … from a purely military perspective from where [Petraeus] sits, that he will want to reduce the forces,” said Rand Beers, president of the National Security Network, a Washington-based think tank and a longtime administration adviser on intelligence and security affairs.

Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the U.S. must be prepared if the situation does not continue on its current positive path.

“If the character of the fight changes in a way that we didn’t expect, if it goes badly for us, what kind of safeguards do we want to have in place?” Cartwright said at the Gates news conference. “What kind of safeguards would General Petraeus want in place? What are the implications in the region?”

By all measures, security has improved dramatically since the 2007 surge of 30,000 troops was fully in place last summer. Overall attack trends have fallen by about 50 percent; roadside bomb explosions have fallen by more than half; monthly coalition deaths, despite a spike this month, have fallen into the low double digits during the last three months; Iraqi civilian deaths are less than half the total of last summer; and the number of weapons caches found and cleared is up by more than a third, according to Multi-National Force-Iraq.

Moreover, the presence of al-Qaida in Iraq appears to be shrinking swiftly. While the group “remains a dangerous threat,” Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, Petraeus’ senior ground commander in Iraq, said at a Jan. 17 Pentagon news conference, “al-Qaida has been pushed out of urban centers like Baghdad, Ramadi, Fallujah and Baqubah and forced into isolated rural areas.”

McCaffrey’s assessment

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who in December compiled an assessment of the Iraq situation for Petraeus based on meetings with 133 military and civilian officials at 44 locations, told a House Armed Services subcommittee Jan. 16 that “U.S. special operations forces ... have tactically defeated [al-Qaida in Iraq] in Baghdad and Anbar province. They are killing them faster than they can generate leadership.”

In addition, security has at least temporarily benefited from the formation of so-called Concerned Local Citizens groups in many areas. Initially drawn mainly from Sunni tribes, Odierno said coalition forces are seeing some reconciliation and cooperation with many Shiite groups in the past three months.

On the negative side, Odierno said some Shiite insurgents continue to attack troops and civilians, and al-Qaida and some Iranian Shiite surrogate groups are trying to infiltrate the CLCs. He said some Iraqi extremists continue to be trained in Iran, and while he’s unsure whether an Iraq-Iran agreement to stop the flow of weapons into Iraq is holding, “we certainly are still uncovering a lot of Iranian weapons here.”

Petraeus also has to take into account the growth in the size and quality of the Iraqi Security Forces. The ISF has the “lead” in nine of 18 provinces, most recently taking over in Basra and Karbala, said Lt. Gen. James Dubik, commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq. Dubik expects the ISF to total more than 580,000 men by the end of 2008 — well on the way to the 600,000-plus he thinks will be adequate for Iraq.

“The Security Forces are bigger and better than they have been at any time since the effort to establish them began,” Dubik told the House Armed Services Committee Jan. 17.

There are two measures of Iraqi security: Iraq must be able to defend itself internally as well as externally. To do the former, the various police forces must be strong enough to handle that mission alone, so the army can defend against external threats.

By the Iraqis’ estimation, it will take years for the ISF to reach self-sufficiency. And those estimates are not the most precise data points on which to base future U.S. troop postures.

“According to our calculations and our timelines, we think that from the first quarter of 2009 until 2012, we will be able to take full control of the internal affairs of the country,” Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul Qadir told The New York Times on Jan. 14.

Qadir said Iraq will take far longer, until 2018-2020, to gain the ability to fully defend itself against external threats.

But Odierno said he thinks those estimates are too conservative.

“At the levels we’re supporting them now, I do not see it going that far at all,” Odierno said. “I see it happening much quicker.”