U.S. President Barack Obama is considering expanding the number of training sites for Iraqi forces to bolster the battle against Islamic State, U.S. military officials said on Tuesday, which could mean deploying hundreds more U.S. forces in Iraq.
The proposed build-up follows only sporadic successes in the months-long U.S.-backed Iraqi drive to push back Islamic State, a drive that suffered a severe setback with the fall of the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi last month.
Since the loss of the city, which drew harsh U.S. criticism of the Iraqi military performance, Washington has begun to speed up supplies of weapons to the government forces and examine ways to improve the training program.
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made clear during a visit to Jerusalem that there were no plans to fundamentally alter Obama's military strategy that has so far kept U.S. ground troops off the front lines.
"We've made some recommendations on potential enhancements to the training and equip mission," Dempsey said, citing options including new training sites.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him, Dempsey did not say how many extra U.S. troops may be involved. Another senior U.S. military official said only that the number would be modest and a third said it could mean hundreds of additional troops.
Dempsey said the U.S. military was working on how such a program would work, including what strain it might put on Pentagon resources and troops already devoted to other missions.
MAINTAINING U.S. STRATEGY
With the effort in Iraq under fire, Obama said on Monday the United States did not yet have a "complete strategy" for training Iraqi security forces to reconquer land lost to Islamic State fighters.
Dempsey said, however, that Obama had not asked for options that "would imply the strategy is ineffective," suggesting the president sought to improve the effort now under way.
Dempsey suggested it was premature to discuss additional troop deployments until a plan had been fleshed out, saying the matter was still "to be determined."
There are about 3,000 U.S. advisers and trainers on the ground in Iraq now.
At the Pentagon, spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said the United States had noted that forces in Iraq who had undergone U.S.-backed training emerged as "an improved fighting force."
"Because of those observations, we've determined that it is better to train more Iraqi security forces and we're now working through a strategy for how to do that," Warren said.
The initial plan was to train about 9,000 Iraqi troops in a year. As of last Thursday, 8,920 Iraqi troops had received training at four different sites and another 2,601 were currently in some stage of training, he said.
The U.S.-trained Iraqi forces have been deployed in al-Karmah, in Samarra and along a 750-mile (1,207-km) forward line of troops in the Kurdish northern part of the country, Warren said. He said they also were preparing for future combat operations in Anbar province.
The U.S.-trained troops did not see action in the battle for Ramadi or the struggle for the strategic oil refinery town of Baiji, where a seesaw battle between Islamic State and Iraqi forces has recently seen a shift in favor of government troops. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Additional reporting by David Alexander in Washington; Editing by David Storey and Ken Wills)