The Troubled Anbar Province.

Feeling marginalised in the new Iraq, the Sunnis in Anbar have generally lost faith in the government. According to a report by Col. Peter Devlin, the top Marine intelligence officer in Iraq based at the Marine headquarters in Anbar, the political and security situation in that vast province is grim and will continue to deteriorate unless the region receives a major infusion of aid and a division is sent to reinforce US troops operating there. The assessment, prepared last month by Devlin, has been sent to senior US military officials in Baghdad and at the Pentagon.

This report says the Sunnis' "greatest fears have been realized". Their suspicion of the central government makes reconciliation more difficult. It has complicated the one US policy option which critics of Bush's strategy have proposed as an alternative means of stabilising Iraq: dividing the country into Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni enclaves. Such a plan is strongly opposed by Sunnis, since they would not trust the central government to share proceeds from oil sales, the assessment notes.

As the situation deteriorates, insurgent attacks have increased. The report describes al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia as an "integral part of the social fabric" of Anbar. This Neo-Salafi organisation, now predominantly made up of Iraqis, is flush with cash, much of it earned from black market or criminal activity.

The New York Times on Sept. 12 said the Marine report was intended to analyse trends, not make policy recommendations. Many of its points went to Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he met with senior Marine officers at Camp Falluja in August. The paper added: "Several elements of the intelligence assessment are consistent with the views of some Marine officers who were interviewed in the field in July".

Discussing force levels, Lt Col Ronald Gridley, executive officer with Regimental Combat Team 7, a Marine unit charged with securing a large swath of Anbar, said his regiment had recommended that additional troops be allocated to its section of Anbar. Even a battalion or two, he said, would help a great deal. Gridley said: "What we recommend and what we get is going to be two different things. In our perfect world, we could use some more infantrymen to be able to patrol the streets and partner with the Iraqi Army". Since the intelligence assessment was prepared in August, however, no reinforcements have been sent. To the contrary, the strain on the US troops in Anbar has increased.

A Stryker unit which was under Marine command has been sent to Baghdad to help with the operation there. Military police earmarked for training the Iraq police in Anbar have been sent to Baghdad. The Marines have sought to make up the shortfall by using existing troops. The Iraqi Army has two divisions in Anbar with a combined authorised strength of some 19,000; but it is under-strength. The two Iraqi divisions together are some 5,000 troops short, while hundreds are absent without leave. As a result of these developments and the practice of giving monthly leaves, the day-to-day strength is 50% for one division and 35% for the other.

While the US military is focused on Baghdad and preventing sectarian strife there from escalating into a civil war, this assessment points to the difficulties in Anbar, a vast Sunni-dominated area of western Iraq where the Sunni insurgency is particularly strong. The province includes such restive towns as Falluja, Ramadi, Haditha and Hit.

Marine commanders have been mounting a campaign to secure the province in the face of a virulent insurgency. But they have had to cope with seriously under-manned Iraqi Army units and a government in Baghdad which tends to view Anbar as low priority for spending and programmes. As a general rule, a substantial number of troops are required in a counter-insurgency campaign to protect the population from attacks and intimidation by insurgent groups. There are about 30,000 Marines, soldiers, airmen and sailors in Anbar, a region which borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

US forces can generally move where they want and are fighting to regain control of Ramadi, the provincial capital, block by block. But there are areas of the province where the Americans have not established visible and persistent presence, the assessment notes. Without the deployment of an additional division, "there is nothing MNF-W can do to influence the motivation of the Sunni [Arabs] to wage an insurgency", the report states. MNF-W stands for Multinational Force-West, which is the formal name of the US Marine command. A division generally numbers about 16,000 troops.

The limited number of troops, however, is just one problem in countering the insurgency there. The assessment describes Anbar as a region marked by violence and criminality. Anbar generally lacks functional governments and a respect for the rule of law. It does not have valuable resources like oil. Nor do its Sunnis appear to represent an important constituency for the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. Although there is economic growth in relatively secure areas, much of this can be attributed to US-backed rebuild-ing effort. The level of economic activity in the province is just a fraction of what it was before 2003, the assessment notes.