BAGHDAD: Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday that although no additional US combat brigades are to withdraw from Iraq this year, he expects the US combat role to keep shrinking.
“We are clearly in a mission transition,” he told reporters on a flight here from Washington.
US troops will increasingly play a backup role, Gates said, as Iraqi security forces take on more of the responsibility for fighting an insurgency that has lost much of its power and influence over the past year.
“The areas in which we are seriously engaged (in fighting) will, I think, continue to narrow,” Gates said.
Iraq currently has primary responsibility for security in 11 of its 18 provinces. It regained responsibility for Anbar province, at one time the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency, a few weeks ago.
In the interview, Gates said he is focusing heavily now on expanding the use and effectiveness of intelligence and surveillance programs that have played an important part in eroding the insurgency in Iraq.
Sandstorms prevented Gates’ aircraft from stopping as planned at Camp Speicher, near the northern city of Tikrit, to receive a briefing on a once-secret program, known as Task Force Odin. The program has innovatively linked a variety of surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft — drones as well as manned planes — with new sensor technologies to hunt down insurgent cells.
