(By Jeff Schogol – Task&Purpose ) – The Pentagon Is Shifting US Combat Power From Iraq to Afghanistan — Again

The U.S. military has begun shifting troops and equipment from Iraq, where ISIS is trying to establish an insurgency, to Afghanistan, where the Taliban and other groups are waging a more conventional fight, officials told Task & Purpose on Monday.

While Iraqi officials and defense contractors refused to say how many troops are being moved from one war zone to the other, as first reported by the Associated Press, the overall number of U.S. troops is expected to remain close to current levels: about 5,200 in Iraq and roughly 14,000 in Afghanistan, said Pentagon spokesman Marine Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway.

More troops in Afghanistan will allow the United States to place advisors and enablers at the battalion level of Afghan military and police units, Rankine-Galloway told Task & Purpose. (…)

As ISIS has moved from fighting on the battlefield to launching suicide attacks against civilians, the U.S. military has less of a need for artillery and other combined-arms units in Iraq, he added.

“We have a government with a security force that has secured its own borders and has removed ISIS’ ability to hold onto territory,” Rankine-Galloway said. “That [Iraqi] force is now engaged in internal security operations: disrupting terrorist plots, rooting out terrorist caches of explosives and weapons. You don’t need things like artillery and HIMARS [High Mobility Artillery Rocket System] to do those sorts of missions.”

U.S. troops in Iraq now and those deploying there in the future will focus on helping the Iraqis stop the flow of foreign fighters into their country from Syria, developing the Iraqi air force and training Iraqi federal police, said Air Force Col. John Thomas, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command. (…)

Meanwhile, the U.S. mission in Afghanistan remains focused on making the Afghan security forces as combat effective as possible against the Taliban and other terrorist groups, such as ISIS-Khorasan in the eastern part of the country. (…)

 

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Photo credit: U.S. Army Cpt. Andrew Roberts directs newly arrived paratroopers where to go near Mosul, Iraq, Feb. 5, 2017, as published in ibid