US faces dilemma as administration stresses reinforcements ‘will not serve in a combat role’ but will be deployed as advisers and trainers

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The Obama administration is preparing to send hundreds of extra troops to help bolster the Iraqi army in its fight against Islamic State.

Barack Obama authorised “up to 450 additional military personnel” to be deployed to the eastern Anbar province, the White House announced on Wednesday. The reinforcements will bring the number of US military forces in Iraq to 3,550.

“These additional US troops will not serve in a combat role,” the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said in a statement.

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The deployment comes less than four years after the US pulled out its troops from Iraq. The move reflects the extent to which Iraqi forces are struggling against Isis, even with the help of air strikes by the US and its allies, including the UK.

In spite of almost daily air attacks on Isis, the US-trained Iraqi army has largely failed to stem the group’s advance. Isis took Ramadi, in Anbar province, last month and the Iraqi army has failed to retake Mosul, lost to Isis last year.

The White House said the new military “advisers” would work with Iraqi forces to “improve their ability to plan, lead and conduct operations” in the fight against Isis.

The focus of the additional forces will be “operational advice and planning support to Iraqi forces” – not combat – said Elissa Slotkin, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, on a call with reporters.

The extra troops are heading for Anbar province to block Isis advances from Ramadi to Baghdad and to try to resurrect a US strategy employed from 2006 of arming and training an alliance of Sunni tribes to fight al-Qaida, which was dubbed the “Anbar Awakening”.



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The Obama administration faces an awkward dilemma, caught between accusations of mission creep and fear of seeing Isis expand further. The president acknowledged on Monday at the G7 that the US has not yet worked out a “complete strategy” for retaking ground from Isis, other than further training of the Iraqi army.



“We have been working,” said the deputy national security advisor Ben Rhoddes, “to evaluate what is going well ... and also to look at setbacks.”

The Pentagon has proposed to the White House a combination of more trainers and advisers and more and better equipment. The president is resisting calls from Republican senators such as John McCain to send thousands more troops to Iraq.

The UK is to send an extra 125 troops to Iraq as trainers, also to Anbar. The UK will have 1,000 trainers and advisers in Iraq, most of them in the Kurdish-controlled area in the north.

The US began its drawdown from Iraq in 2007, when it had a force of 170,000 in the country.

