Iraq 'reverse surge' plays on US minds

The US is reluctant to claim victory as bomb attacks contin

On his latest visit to Iraq, the US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates arrived to the explosion of a suicide car bomb in a village near Balad, 75km (47 miles) north of Baghdad, which left more than 30 Iraqis dead.

As he was preparing to leave a day later, central Baghdad was shaken by two car bomb blasts in quick succession. Eleven people were killed as the explosives went off near a queue of people waiting to buy petrol.

In both instances, and in another attack by militants in the far north-west of the country on Sunday in which 15 people were reported killed, the targets were believed to be local Iraqis who had turned against al-Qaeda and its allies and joined the US and Iraqi government forces in fighting them.

Troop levels

While nobody contests the US assertion that the security situation has improved a great deal, it is clearly neither perfect, universal nor irreversible.

This is why Mr Gates signalled during his Baghdad visit that he favoured the idea that US troops should be held at pre-surge levels - about 130,000 - for a period of "consolidation and evaluation", once the surge ends in July.

Attacks are still happening in Baghdad, although controlling the city has been the main focus of the year-old "surge" in US troop levels. BBC