The US military is accelerating its efforts to train and advise Iraqi forces fighting Islamic State militants, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said on Sunday.
Hagel said US special operations troops in Iraq’s Anbar Province are getting an early start on the train-and-advise effort. He said the effort began a few days ago, but did not provide details.
The Pentagon chief spoke to reporters after observing US troops training in California’s Mojave Desert.
According to plans laid out last week, the US expects to train nine Iraqi security forces brigades and three Kurdish Peshmerga brigades.
Hagel said the speed-up was recommended by General Lloyd Austin, commander of US Central Command.
Hagel’s spokesman, US Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby, said later that Austin believes getting an early start on training Iraqi forces in Anbar may prompt other countries with a stake in the fight against the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to commit trainers to Iraq.
Approaching the problem of ill-trained and poorly motivated Iraqi soldiers as a coalition rather than as a unilateral US undertaking is a key pillar of US strategy. Partnership is seen as a way of undermining the ideological appeal of Islamic State militants.
Kirby said a number of countries have made verbal commitments to provide trainers, but he said he could not identify them because they have yet to publicly announce their intended contributions.
The US announced earlier this month that it would send another 1,500 troops to Iraq to expand training and advising of Iraqi security forces. However, those troops have not yet departed the US, leaving some to question how urgently Washington viewed the mission.
The special operations troops that Hagel said Austin is now putting at al-Asad Air Base in Anbar had been operating as 12-man advisory teams elsewhere in Iraq since last summer. Kirby said about 50 are now at al-Asad, which was a major air hub for US forces during the 2003 to 2011 war.
The Islamic State group holds key cities in Anbar, including Fallujah.
During his stop at Fort Irwin to see US troops’ desert training, Hagel gave a pep talk to a few hundred soldiers. One asked Hagel when the US was going to send an invasion force to Iraq to fight the Islamic State group.
Hagel said that was not in the cards, echoing US President Barack Obama’s belief that it would make no sense.
“This has to be an Iraqi effort,” Hagel said. “It is their country. They have to do this themselves.”
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