US:The US intelligence community has provided a mixed picture of the security situation in Iraq but cautioned that a reduction of US forces and a scaled-back mission for the remaining forces "would erode security gains achieved thus far".
The addition of 30,000 US troops in Iraq over the past several months has so far brought "uneven improvements in Iraq's security situation", according to declassified key judgments published in a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, an update of a January 2007 assessment.
"The level of overall violence . . . remains high; Iraq's sectarian groups remain unreconciled . . . and to date Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively," the latest report states.
When the Bush administration first announced the additional troops, officials said the aim was to provide additional security in Baghdad and elsewhere. Moreover, it was intended to provide "breathing space" for the Iraqi government to permit political reconciliation among Shia, Sunni and Kurdish factions.
The report concluded that while the troop surge has temporarily halted the overall security decline of six months ago, political reconciliation has come to a "standstill", according to a senior intelligence official.
The report attributed "recent security improvements in Iraq, including success against al- Qaeda in Iraq", on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations by US forces. "A change of mission that interrupts that synchronisation would place security improvements at risk," it added. The reference was to shifting from counterinsurgency operations to supporting Iraqi forces.
The report, for the first time, examined a key part of the current US effort - the arming of Sunni tribal leaders who have joined in the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. It depicted the impact as limited, noting that although Sunni tribal resistance to al-Qaeda fighters has expanded, particularly in al-Anbar province, it "has not yet translated into broad Sunni Arab support for the Iraqi government or widespread willingness to work with the Shia".
The report notes that Shia leaders are divided on the initiative. Some in Baghdad fear the newly armed Sunni tribes "will ultimately side with armed opponents of the government", while others have allowed the anti-al- Qaeda Sunnis to join interior and defence ministry forces.
Although the potential remains for these anti-al-Qaeda Sunni tribal groups to emerge as a basis for a "bottom up" political accommodation, that will only occur "if the Iraqi government accepts and supports them", says the report.
If that does not happen, and US forces draw down, the empowered local Sunni tribal groups "could become strong enough to join together to challenge the national government in some geographic areas", the senior intelligence official said.
Al-Qaeda has taken major hits from the armed Sunni tribes and the group's attacks on civilians have turned citizens against them, the report states. It is still considered a threat although, according to US intelligence information that was not part of the declassified judgments, its actions represent a minor source of violence inside Iraq, at less than 10 per cent of the roughly 1,000 incidents a week.
The report said that sectarian violence is continuing and attributes it to "population displacement" - a reference to the ethnic cleansing of formerly mixed Shia-Sunni areas that has helped provoke an exodus of two million refugees and the displacement of almost as many within the country.
The report discloses that Syria has "cracked down" on some Sunni groups, including al-Qaeda, inside its own borders because they are considered to pose a threat to the administration there. However, Syria is also supporting non-al-Qaeda Sunni groups inside Iraq "in a bid to increase Syrian influence."