IRAQ: The Americans did not commit a sufficient number of troops to pacify Iraq, writes Michael Jansen.
Iraqi resistance groups have been able to entrench themselves and operate freely because the Bush administration did not commit the number of troops required for post- war stabilisation.
Before the war, the US army chief, Gen Eric Shinseki, warned the Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to provide post-war security. Other military experts advised that 500,000 troops would be necessary if the recommended ratio of 20 soldiers per 1,000 was observed. They argued that a base of 2.5 million troops would be needed to sustain such a deployment.
The half-million level was considered adequate if there was not a state of insurrection, but unrest would require more troops.
Mr Rumsfeld compelled the general to take early retirement, ignored the experts' advice and adopted the doctrine of "lite" deployment - but he did so out of necessity, not choice. There are only 1.4 million troops in the US armed forces. Only 480,000 are professionals on full-time active duty and 128,568 are reservists and National Guardsmen.
This means that the pool of US military manpower is 608,565 troops. Of these, 364,000 are deployed around the world, including in Iraq and the Gulf. This leaves 244,568 troops for domestic defence and rotation.
The US now has 132,000 troops in Iraq and Britain and other contributing countries have 24,000, a total of 156,000. The number of US and British troops taking part in the invasion and initial occupation was 160,000. The consequence of "lite" deployment was instant insecurity and the looting of Iraq's fragile infrastructure, degraded by 20 years of warfare and more than a decade of sanctions.
Before the war Saddam's regime had distributed a million small arms to citizens. Iraq was awash therefore in personal weapons, assault rifles and grenade-launchers. After, there were not enough coalition troops to locate and place under permanent guard hundreds of dumps containing a million tons of weapons: bombs, explosives and 5,000 shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missiles of the type which brought down the Chinook helicopter on Sunday.
At least 35,000 tonnes of weapons remain unaccounted for or stored at unguarded sites. Russian bombs and explosives looted from such stores were used in the August attacks on the Jordanian embassy and UN headquarters in Baghdad and outside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf.
The situation could very well deteriorate. Last month, the Pentagon issued a call up for 15,000 reservists to replace troops leaving Iraq and the army staff warned that it could not maintain the current level beyond next spring. It has drawn up a plan to cut the number to 100,000 by summer and 50,000 by mid-2005.
Mr Rumsfeld and the US chief administrator in Iraq, Mr Paul Bremer, argue that US and other foreign troops will be gradually replaced by reconstituted Iraqi forces. However, recruiting, training and equipping Iraqi formations is going very slowly.
Mr Bremer says 85,000 Iraqis are now serving in various units.
These include 40,000 in the police, including 10,000 in training; 20,000 in the facilities protection force; 7,800 in civil defence; 5,000 in the border guards and 1,400 in the new army (half of whom are just beginning training). He says 100,000 Iraqis should be deployed by next spring, 200,000 by next September.
However, serving Iraqi police complain that they do not have enough weapons, radios or vehicles to be effective. Even if 200,000 Iraqis were deployed, they would be backed by only 100,000-120,000 occupation troops, well below the number required for stabilisation and far below the number needed to deal with the insurrection.
Some commentators argue that the only option for the Bush administration is to cede control of Iraq to the UN and call upon the international community to provide enough regular troops and peacekeepers to impose order.
The longer the administration postpones this day, the more entrenched and effective will the resistance become.