Paris: About half of Iraq’s army is incapable of partnering effectively with the US to roll back the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s territorial gains in western and northern Iraq, and the other half needs to be partially rebuilt with US training and additional equipment, the top US military officer said on Wednesday.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former wartime commander of US training programmes in Iraq, said a renewed US training effort might revive the issue of gaining legal immunity from Iraqi prosecution for those US troops who are training the Iraqis. The previous Iraqi government refused to grant immunity for US troops who might have remained as trainers after the US military mission ended in December 2011.

“There will likely be a discussion with the new Iraqi government, as there was with the last one, about whether we need to have” Iraqi lawmakers approve new US training, he said. He didn’t describe the full extent of such training but said it would be limited and he believed Iraq would endorse it.

“This is about training them in protected locations and then enabling them” with unique US capabilities such as intelligence, aerial surveillance and air power, as well as US advisers, so they can “fight the fight” required to push Isil militants back into Syria, Dempsey said. He spoke with a small group of reporters travelling with him to Paris to meet with his French counterpart to discuss the conflicts in Syria and Iraq and other issues.

The bolstering of Iraqi security forces is one element in a multifaceted campaign plan that President Barack Obama is to be briefed on Wednesday in Tampa, Florida, when he meets with General Lloyd Austin, head of US Central Command, which manages US military operations and relations across the Middle East.

Potential air strikes

A Pentagon plan for training Syrian rebels is another, more controversial element of the plan, which also includes potential air strikes in Syria; building an international coalition to combat Isil in Syria and Iraq; and efforts to cut off finances and stem the flow of foreign fighters to Isil.

Once Obama signs off on the plan, the Iraq portion will need to be adapted, in consultation with the Iraqi government, to fit the Iraqis’ priorities, Dempsey said.

Dempsey said US military teams that spent much of the summer in Iraq assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the Iraqi security forces concluded that 26 of 50 army brigades were capable partners for the US. He described them as well led and well equipped, adding, “They appear to have a national instinct, instead of a sectarian instinct.” He said the 24 other brigades were too heavily weighted with Shiites to be part of a credible national force.

Sectarianism has been a major problem for the Iraqi security forces for years and is in part a reflection of resentments that built up during the decades of rule under Saddam Hussain, who repressed the Shiite population, and the unleashing of reprisals against Sunnis after US forces toppled him in April 2003. Sunni resistance led to the relatively brief rise of an extremist group called Al Qaida in Iraq, led by the late Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. That group withered but re-emerged as the Isil organisation, which capitalised on Sunni disenchantment with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

Dempsey said no amount of US military power will solve the problem of Isil’s takeover of large swathes of northern and western Iraq. The solution, he said, must begin with formation of an Iraqi government that is able to convince the country’s Kurdish and Sunni populations that they will be equal partners with the Shiites in Iraq’s future.

“I’m telling you, if that doesn’t happen then it’s time for Plan B,” he said. He didn’t say what that would entail.

Dempsey also said Isil fighters in Iraq have reacted to weeks of US air strikes by making themselves less visible, and he predicted they would “literally litter the road networks” with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in the days ahead. That, in turn, will require more counter-IED training and equipment for the Iraq army, he said.