Pessimistic Pentagon Studies Fallback Options in Iraq

The Pentagon is actively considering a series of fallback positions for Iraq in the event that President George Bush's plan of expanding the US military presence fails. Among the options are adoption of the El Salvador model, which would see Washington withdraw most of its 150,000-plus troops and replace them with a few hundred, or few thousand, military advisers.

A more drastic option also being looked at is to retreat inside Baghdad's Green Zone and the heavily fortified airport on the outskirts of the city.

The US appears to be moving closer to an endgame, with Congress this week scheduled to vote on a timetable for withdrawal troops by September next year.

An adviser familiar with discussions inside the Pentagon said there was great pessimism about whether Mr Bush's troop "surge" would work, and military planners were studying a range of alternatives.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the Pentagon is considering a gradual withdrawal of troops and a shift in emphasis to training and advising Iraqi forces, a plan referred to inside the Pentagon as the El Salvador model.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the US sent 55 advisers, members of the Green Berets, to support the government and security forces, an operation judged a success by Washington. Congress refused to allow the deployment of combat troops and set the limit on the number of advisers at 55.

Andrew Krepinovich, a respected strategic analyst who advises the Pentagon on Iraq, said yesterday that the El Salvador model was being actively discussed, but he did not know whether it was being taken seriously. Mr Krepinovich, a former lieutenant-colonel who heads the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the problem with the model "is you need some kind of government to support and the government has to have some legitimacy and loyalty". He questioned whether there was such a government in Iraq.

He also questioned the reliability of the Iraq forces, in particular the police. "If you were to draw down to a few hundred or few thousand advisers, it it not clear whether they would be helping these groups to do more than prepare for civil war."

Winslow Wheeler, a senior fellow at the Centre for Defence Information thinktank, who was involved in El Salvador, also said the El Salvador model was not viable in Iraq. "It is not sufficient to train indigenous forces. They have to have a government they are willing to die for. There is no moderate centre in Iraq for which people are willing to die."

Referring to the chaotic scenes that accompanied the US pullout from Saigon, Mr Wheeler said retreat into Baghdad's fortified zones would be tantamount to "bringing in the wooden steps for helicopters to take us out. That is just the final stage before the failure becomes apparent."