WASHINGTON, Aug 22, (AFP): The top US commander in Iraq admitted Sunday that a “complete failure” of Iraqi security forces could oblige the United States to resume combat operations there, but he called this an unlikely scenario.
The last US combat brigade withdrew from Iraq on Thursday. On August 31 combat operations officially end and the role of the remaining 50,000 American troops switches to one of providing advice and assistance.
General Ray Odierno told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the ability of the Iraqi police and army to keep a lid on the violence was improving, but refused to rule out a return to US combat missions if things went sour.
Security advancements meant Iraq was on target to be able to handle its own security after 2011 when the remainder of the US troops are due to be withdrawn, the commanding general of American forces in Iraq said.
“My assessment today is they will be (ready),” he told CNN, speaking from Baghdad. “I think that they continue to grow. We continue to see development in planning, and in their ability to conduct operations.
“The Iraqi people are resilient. They want this. They want to have a democratic country. They want to be on their own. They want to be moving forward and be a contributor to stability in the Middle East.”
Despite the advances in building up Iraq’s security apparatus, Odierno conceded there were scenarios where the US military might have to step back in and resume combat operations.
“If, for example, you had a complete failure of the (Iraqi) security forces. If you had some political divisions within the political forces that caused them to fracture, but we don’t see that happening,” he said.
“They have been doing so well for so long now that we really believe that we are beyond that point.”
But massive security challenges remain, and the extent of the country’s political problems was highlighted this week when the winner of the general election five months ago broke off coalition talks with his main rival.
Thursday’s pullout, a major symbolic step in the handing back of power to the Iraqi people, came two days after a suicide bomber killed 59 people at a Baghdad army recruiting center in Iraq’s deadliest attack this year.
Iraq’s top military officer warned earlier this month that American forces may be needed in the conflict-wracked nation for a further decade.
“If I were asked about the withdrawal, I would say to politicians: the US army must stay until the Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020,” Lieutenant General Babaker Zerbari told AFP.
US President Barack Obama will make a major speech on Iraq on his return next week from his summer vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, a senior administration official said.
Obama, who was an opponent of the Iraq war from the beginning and promised on the road to the White House to withdraw US forces as quickly as possible, has insisted the ongoing pullout is on schedule and will not be altered.
Under a bilateral security pact all US forces must leave Iraq by the end of 2011, but Odierno said special training units could remain, noting similar security arrangements with regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
“Potentially we could be there beyond 2011,” he said. “If the government of Iraq requests fielding systems that could help them with external threats.”
Anthony Blinken, national security advisor for Vice President Joe Biden, suggested earlier this month that the US military presence in Iraq post-2011 could be just “dozens” or “hundreds” of troops under embassy authority.
The August 31 formal end to US combat operations comes almost seven and a half years after the start of the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, ordered by Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush.
 Iran is funding extremist groups in Iraq out of fear of a strong democracy as a neighbor, the commander of US forces in Iraq said Sunday.
“I think they don’t want to see Iraq turn into a strong democratic country, Odierno told CNN.
“They would rather see it become a weak governmental institution so they don’t add more problems for Iran in the future.”
Odierno said Iran is funding and training Shia extremists in Iraq in an effort to improve insurgents’ capabilities.
He said they were working partly to attack US forces, but also “to make sure that everybody understands that they can have some impact in the country.”
“They clearly want to see a certain type of government that is formed here,” he said.
His comments came just days after the last US combat brigade left Iraq, more than seven years after the US-led invasion that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
But unrest continues there, with a suicide bomber killing 59 people at a Baghdad army recruiting center this week and a spike in violence in July.
Killed
Meanwhile, an American soldier was killed in southern Iraq on Sunday, the US army said in a statement, bringing to 4,417 the number of its troops killed in the country since Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003.
“A United States Forces — Iraq — soldier was killed today in Basra province while conducting operations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom,” the army said, without giving further details.
There are currently 52,000 American soldiers in Iraq and the army is close to completing a major withdrawal of troops by the end of August — when numbers will fall to 50,000 — as it declares an end to its combat mission here.
The withdrawal of the last US combat brigade on Thursday was hailed as a symbolic moment for the controversial American presence in Iraq, more than seven years since the US-invasion that toppled Saddam.
However, US troops continue to conduct joint operations with Iraqi soldiers and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Diyala, Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces under a joint security agreement outside the scope of regular US army missions in Iraq.
Protested
Dozens of Iraqis violently protested in the southern city of Nasiriyah to demand better power supplies, wounding 16 people including 10 policemen, witnesses and officials said on Sunday.
The Saturday evening demonstration involved dozens of people who shouted “Where is the electricity?”, with several of them hurling stones and beating policemen with sticks, in a repeat of similar protests two months ago.
In response, officers in the city, 305 kilometres (190 miles) south of Baghdad, fired water cannons to disperse the crowd and arrested 40 people.
The protest was reminiscent of similar demonstrations in June in several Iraqi cities over power rationing, including one in Nasiriyah in which 17 police officers were wounded as a protest turned violent.
“At 9:30 last night, dozens of people gathered in the centre of Nasiriyah to protest, saying the provincial government was not providing sufficient basic services, especially electricity,” said Lieutenant Colonel Murtada al-Shahtur, spokesman for Nasiriyah police.
“They threw stones and used sticks, while police fired water cannons. Ten policemen were wounded, and 40 protesters were arrested.”
Escaped
Meanwhile, the convicted Iraqi mastermind of the killing of British aid worker Margaret Hassan escaped from prison almost one year ago, a government minister admitted for the first time on Sunday.
Ali Lutfi Jassar al-Rawi, sentenced to life last year for Hassan’s murder, busted out of Central Baghdad Prison, formerly known as the infamous Abu Ghraib jail, on September 10, 2009, the same day a riot broke out there.
Judicial officials have in recent months said Rawi was “missing,” forcing several postponements of his retrial for the killing.
But after another aborted court hearing on Sunday, Iraq’s Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim told AFP that Rawi was officially on the run.
“This guy, he escaped from prison,” Ibrahim said, disclosing the date of Rawi’s breakout. “People facilitated his escape, he is gone.”
The minister said he learned of Rawi’s escape “20 or 30 days ago.”
“At that time, he seized the opportunity of the riots in the prison in September 2009 and he escaped. He was the only one who escaped.
Ibrahim added that authorities had “investigated the groups that facilitated his escape” and added that several people “were arrested and going to court,” but did not detail how many conspirators had been involved.
Inmates clashed repeatedly with warders engaged on a search operation at Abu Ghraib, a former torture facility under dictator Saddam Hussein, last September 10, resulting in many casualties.
The jail became notorious as the place where American soldiers were pictured humiliating Iraqi prisoners in the wake of the US-led invasion in 2003 that ousted Saddam from power.