I speculated based on early statements by the military that one purpose of sending two more Marine battalions to Anbar was to prevent jihadis from running west as the Baghdad security plan unfolds.
This seems to be the idea:
There are currently 2,500 members of the various ERUs, and there are 13,200 policemen and 13,000 Iraqi army soldiers serving throughout Anbar, alongside approximately 35,000 men and women of the Multinational Force West. Over the coming months, the coalition troop strength will rise and fall with the coming and going of our third battalion.
These increased forces along with the Iraqi army and police forces are working in unison with the Multinational Division Baghdad to ensure the success of the Baghdad security plan. Multiforces West is supporting the effort in this plan, and as such, is integrating its operations to best support the coalition and Iraqi forces engaged in Baghdad.
By interdicting and disrupting terrorists, we will help reduce the level of sectarian violence in Baghdad. ...Okay, given the mission, you know, and the mission that I have now is to interdict those accelerants, those insurgents that are coming into the country, mainly using the Euphrates River Valley as a means for coming in. In addition, my mission is to be a supporting plan for the Baghdad security plan, and to eliminate any of those that would interfere with that process. Given the surge battalions, I have enough forces now, as I stated earlier in my opening statement, to not only do my enduring missions of security along the Euphrates River, put persistent presence in those six major cities that I listed, as well as interdict those accelerants who have come in or out of Baghdad, in order to ensure that that Baghdad security plan operates successfully. So given those missions, I have enough forces to do that. ...
I fully expect that [Al Qaeda in Iraq] will be as they leave Baghdad, as they clamp down on that, they will move into areas that we have determined to be up in our northeast portion of my sector, and I suspect -- historically they have used those areas to have campsites, training sites, safe haven sites. And the things that I'm doing now is to interdict those sites. So I fully expect them to return to those, those that just don't go to ground and try to wait out to see what this surge will mean.
But my job is to make sure that they aren't able to participate in or go back if they come out.
And more is planned for Anbar once Baghdad is settled:
Once Baghdad is declared relatively secure, commanders have a tentative long-term plan to shift more forces to al Anbar province to help Marines and soldiers there uproot al-Qaida from its main base of operation in Iraq, according to a key military planner.
The shift likely would not happen until next year, according to a defense source who was briefed on the plan, and would be needed to finally end the terrorist group's three-year grip on Anbar.
The source, who asked to remain anonymous, said commanders are counting on making significant gains in the capital by early 2008, when all five U.S. brigades in the U.S. reinforcement plan will have been in place. The last brigade is slated to arrive in May. Two are in place in Baghdad.
With recent moves by Anbar tribes to side against the jihadis, getting the jihadis to move where Iraqis will fight them too isn't a bad idea. And fighting away from the news bureaus isn't bad either.
Still, my speculation that the Marines would be an anvil to intercept jihadis as they fled to Anbar in a sort of trap was not quite right. The idea was to get them out of Baghdad, have the Marines keep the enemy from returning freely to Baghdad, and worry about the outlying areas later. With about 61,000 security personnel for a province with about 1.5 million people, we have twice the ratio of troops-to-people considered the minimum for a counter-insurgency campaign.
This military operation can buy us the time to win the war. We have the Anbar Sunni Arabs as allies against the jihadis. We must get the central Iraq Sunni Arabs to finally give up while the Shia militias are restrained and get both to focus on the jihadis. This is the development that will win the war--not measuring whether the violence in Baghdad is down 20%, 50%, or even up 5%. Achieve the surrender of the non-jihadi Sunni Arabs and the violence will go down. Don't mix up cause and effect.
