OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN (AP) - The long U.S. effort to stabilize western Iraq, a hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency, has reached a turning point with new prospects for success, the top Marine general said Monday. "I think, in that area, we have turned the corner," Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in an Associated Press interview as he flew back to Washington after four days in Iraq.His assessment of Anbar province marks a sharp departure from the view that prevailed for much of the past four years, a time of deadly battles with the Sunni insurgency and of local alienation from the Shiite-dominated national government in Baghdad.
As recently as last fall, the top Marine intelligence officer in Anbar reported dim prospects for securing the province and little likelihood of the U.S. military persuading the Sunnis - who lost national power when Saddam Hussein fell - to quit the insurgency.
Conway also said in the in-flight interview that the Marine Corps is studying how it could sustain into 2008 the higher troops levels that President Bush ordered in January. He said it was likely that five Marine Reserve infantry battalions that already have served in Iraq would be remobilized and sent again. Of about 35,000 U.S. troops in Anbar, about 25,000 are Marines.
On his visit Conway was told by numerous American commanders throughout Anbar that the tide had shifted against the extremist group al-Qaida in Iraq when Sunni tribal sheiks who previously opposed U.S. forces decided to start cooperating instead.
Some commanders said the extremists' key misstep was to interfere with the locals' black market trading, which al-Qaida co-opted in order to finance itself. Anbar stretches west from Baghdad to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The new cooperation has enabled U.S. forces in recent months to clear extremist elements from even the most violent areas, including Ramadi, and to put more Iraqi forces on the streets, Conway was told. Cooperation by the sheiks also has quickly created a Sunni police force in areas where none existed before.
Conway, dressed in his desert flight suit, noted that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has cautioned against "happy talk" about short-term improvements in Iraq that might not be sustained. "I was guardedly optimistic in December," before Bush ordered an extra 21,500 American combat troops to Iraq, including 4,000 Marines to Anbar province, Conway said. Four months later he said he sees a decisively improved situation in Anbar, adding, "That's not too optimistic or too much 'happy talk.'"
Conway noted that if Anbar is getting better, that does not necessarily translate to success in Baghdad, where the situation is more complicated with sectarian violence that does not exist in Sunni-dominated Anbar.