US Troops in Iraq to Focus More on Support Than Combat
By VOA News
14 July 2009
The U.S. Department of Defense said it is changing the composition and mission of some troop units being deployed to Iraq to reflect a new focus on supporting Iraqi troops.
Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman said Tuesday that four of seven brigades that will head to Iraq in the coming months will be designated as Advisory and Assistance Brigades, rather than as Brigade Combat Teams.
He said the units will have extra military engineers, civil affairs specialists and relatively senior officers to coordinate with Iraqi officers.
Whitman said the fundamental difference will be the units' mission, which will focus on assisting Iraqi forces. But he said the U.S. troops being deployed will conduct counter-terrorism missions as necessary.
Overall, Whitman said there will be no major increase in U.S. troop levels, which now stand at 128,000. U.S. troops will withdraw in the coming year, leaving 35,000 to 50,000 in Iraq by the end of August 2009.
In other news, the top U.S. military officer said he is impressed with the security and political progress he has seen in an ethnically divided Iraqi province.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, met with Iraqi officials Monday in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, where ethnic and sectarian tensions are high. Admiral Mullen later told reporters that, overall, Arab-Kurd relations were better than he had anticipated, based on the historical challenges in Kirkuk.
Kurds are believed to be the majority in Kirkuk, and they want it to be part of the largely autonomous Kurdistan region. But Arabs and Turkmen living in Kirkuk object.
Discord is so deep that Kirkuk was excluded from provincial elections in January after ethnic groups failed to agree on a power-sharing formula.
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