Richard Norton-Taylor and Michael Howard

It could take at least five years before Iraqi forces are strong enough to impose law and order on the country, the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) warned on May 24.

The thinktank’s report said that Iraq had become a valuable recruiting ground for al-Qaida, and Iraqi forces were nowhere near close to matching the insurgency. John Chipman,

IISS director, said the continuing ability of the insurgents to inflict mass casualties “must cast doubt on US plans to redeploy American troops and eventually reduce their numbers’’.

Insurgents have killed 600 Iraqis since the new government was formed. The IISS report said: “Best estimates suggest that it will take up to five years to create anything close to an effective indigenous force able to impose and guarantee order across the country.’’ The report said that, on balance, Washington’s policy over the past year had been effective in emboldening regional players in the Middle East and the Gulf to rally against rogue states.

But it warned that the inspirational effect of the intervention in Iraq on Islamist terrorism was “the proverbial elephant in the living room. From al-Qaida’s point of view, Bush’s Iraq policies have arguably produced a confluence of propitious circumstances: a strategically bogged down America, hated by much of the Islamic world, and regarded warily even by its allies’’.

A statement was placed on the al-Qaida in Iraq website claiming that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born Islamist who has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks, kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages, had been injured. The statement, whose authenticity could not be verified, asked Muslims to pray for his recovery but did not say how or when he was injured. There were reports this month that the US military was investigating whether al-Zarqawi was at a Ramadi hospital and whether he was ill or wounded.

The thinktank report points to US estimates that there are between 12,000 and 20,000 hardcore insurgents in Iraq. It says that Iraqi politicians have been keen to blame the rise

in sectarian violence on foreign jihadists. “But they may have overstated their case.’’ Insurgents demonstrated their ability to hit US forces in the heart of the Iraqi capital Tuesday when a military convoy was targeted by a car bomb, killing three US troops.

A fourth US soldier was killed in a drive-by shooting as he sat atop a Bradley fighting vehicle at an observation post in central Baghdad. The US military also announced that four soldiers had been killed by a roadside bomb on Monday in Haswa, 30 miles south of the capital, bringing the total number of US fatalities since Sunday to 13.

On Tuesday, Iraq’s new interior minister, Bayan al-Jabr, met two prominent Sunni Muslim figures in an effort to reduce sectarian tensions. Officials said the meeting was designed

to “curb all hateful attempts aiming to plan sectarian sedition among the Iraqi people’’.

Toby Dodge, senior fellow at the IISS and expert on Iraq, estimated yesterday that there were about 1,000 foreign fighters in Iraq “perfecting the use of car bombs’’ and causing more problems across the region, including Saudi Arabia. There seemed to be no “viable exit strategy’’ for foreign troops. —The Guardian