BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Three months after the start of the Baghdad security plan that has added thousands of American and Iraqi troops to the capital, they control fewer than one-third of the city's neighborhoods, far short of the initial goal for the operation, according to some commanders and an internal military assessment.
The assessment, completed in late May, found that American and Iraqi forces are able to "protect the population" and "maintain physical influence over" only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods.
In the remaining 311 neighborhoods, troops have either not begun operations aimed at rooting out insurgents or still face "resistance," according to the one-page assessment, which summarized reports from brigade and battalion commanders in Baghdad.
The assessment offers the first comprehensive look at the progress of the effort to stabilize Baghdad with the heavy influx of additional troops. The last remaining American contributions to the troop increase are now arriving.
Violence has diminished in many areas but is especially chronic in mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods in western Baghdad, several senior officers said. Overall, improvements have not been as widespread or lasting across Baghdad, they acknowledged.
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The operation "is at a difficult point right now, to be sure," said Maj. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, which has responsibility for Baghdad.
He said that, while military planners had expected to make greater gains by now, that has not been possible in large part because Iraqi police and army units, which were expected to handle basic security tasks, such as manning checkpoints and conducting patrols, have not been provided all the forces promised and in some cases, have performed poorly.
That is forcing American commanders to conduct operations to remove insurgents from some areas multiple times. The heavily Shiite security forces also have repeatedly failed to intervene in some areas when fighters who fled or laid low when the American troops arrived resumed sectarian killings.
"Until you have the ability to have a presence on the street by people who are seen as honest and who are not letting things come back in," said Brooks, referring to the Iraqi police units, "you can't shift into another area and expect that place to stay the way it was."
When planners designed the Baghdad security plan late last year, they had assumed most Baghdad neighborhoods would be under control about July, according to a senior American military officer, so the emphasis could shift into restoring services and rebuilding the neighborhoods as the summer progressed.
"We were way too optimistic," said the officer, adding that September is now the goal for establishing basic security in most neighborhoods, the same month that Bush administration officials have said they plan to review the progress of the plan.
Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the senior American ground commander in Iraq, said he never believed that a midsummer timetable for establishing security in Baghdad was realistic. "This was always going to be conditions-driven," he said, noting that he always had expected it would take until fall to establish security across much of the city.
But to meet that timetable, he said Iraqi Security Forces would have to make strides at maintaining security.
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"Ultimately, the ISF, and specifically the police, are the key to holding an area," he said. "We have to within the next four months move them more towards holding the areas we have cleared."
The last of the five combat brigades ordered to Iraq as reinforcements as part of the security plan will increase the number of American troops in the city to about 30,000, up from 21,000 before the start of the operation, an American officer said.
In addition, about 30,000 Iraqi army and national police forces and another 21,000 policemen have been deployed in Baghdad. Many of the Iraqi units have turned up at less than full strength, and other units have been redeployed from the capital, Brooks said, leaving fewer than expected.
American forces also have had to send troops outside the capital to deal with an upsurge in violence in Diyala province and to search for three American soldiers kidnapped south of the capital.
