WASHINGTON — Iraqi forces began taking a back seat in combat operations in Iraq last autumn, even before President Bush started deploying 21,500 more troops chiefly to spearhead a security crackdown in Baghdad, according to a new Pentagon report.
The report shows that Iraqi military units began assuming greater responsibility for operations in the earlier part of last year. But the trend has reversed. In October, U.S. forces were conducting 8% of the combat operations, while 72% were joint missions. By January, U.S. units were conducting 33% of the operations, and the percentage of joint operations had fallen to 59%.
In addition, the number of Iraqi army and other units in the lead has declined to 92 in February from 94 in November, while the number of U.S.-led missions has been increasing.
The quarterly report to Congress, required by law, covers the period immediately before Feb. 13, when the U.S. began building up troop levels and implementing its new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq.
Military experts have said that, at least in the new strategy's initial phases, Iraqi units will probably take a back seat as American units step up their operations. But the decline in the posture of Iraqi troops runs counter to administration projections.
Both before announcing his new strategy and after, President Bush has stressed the importance of allowing Iraqis to "take the lead" in stemming violence and sectarian warfare. "We have a new strategy with a new mission: helping secure the population, especially in Baghdad," Bush said in his Jan. 13 weekly radio address. "Our plan puts Iraqis in the lead."
The report acknowledges that parts of the conflict are like a civil war, but it agrees with intelligence officials who said last month that the term "does not adequately capture the complexity" of the conflict.
"Some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a 'civil war,' " the Pentagon report says, including hardened sectarian divisions and forced population displacement.
Anthony H. Cordesman, a former defense official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the report, the first under new Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, was more "frank" than previous versions.
"They are providing a much more honest report; they have honestly described it as a civil war," he said. "They have run out of spin."
