More on the Really Difficult Climate of Iraq's Anbar Province

I noted MissM's posting on this last night. Interestingly, late last week, I happened to catch a radio program (could have been on VPR or WGDR or one of their feeds) where translaters from some Anbar province leaders said that it was not that al Qaeda did anything to recruit them into more interest in the Al Qaeda movement. Instead, they felt drawn to al Qaeda directly by the actions of the U.S. in Iraq; to them, al Qaeda represented the only real opposition movement to the U.S. If so, man... what does this say about our operations there? And what does it bode for the rest of Iraq in our continued occupation?

From Monday's WaPo:

The Pentagon is taking "very seriously" a classified intelligence report concluding that the U.S. military has fought to a stalemate in Iraq's western Anbar province as political conditions also worsen in the "epicenter" of the country's Sunni insurgency, a senior defense official said yesterday.

In congressional testimony on security in Iraq, Pentagon officials also said the rise of "ethno-sectarian violence" has laid the conditions for civil war, aborting plans by U.S. commanders to begin withdrawing U.S. troops. Gaps in the capabilities of Iraqi security forces leave open the prospect that U.S. forces may have to stay in the country for as many as five or more years, they said.

Calling Anbar "a very hot zone on the battlefield," Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric S. Edelman said the secret report on the volatile, strategic province was gaining high-level attention at the Pentagon.

"It is an important report. We've taken it very seriously," Edelman told a panel of the House Government Reform Committee. "This is an operational assessment by one very good intel officer," he said, adding that "a lot of us are looking at it very closely" and are seeking a further assessment on Anbar from top U.S. commanders in Iraq.

The report, first outlined publicly in The Washington Post yesterday, said a shortage of U.S. and Iraqi troops in Anbar and the collapse of local governments have left a vacuum that has been exploited by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. It painted a bleak picture of security prospects in Anbar, a large province bordering Syria and Jordan that includes the troubled cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

"Anbar has been the epicenter of the insurgency," Edelman said, adding that "a purely military solution to any insurgency is not possible." He said the report was a "snapshot" that does not represent the entire country.