RAMADI, Iraq — RAMADI, Iraq - As Iraqi officials and the U.S. military haggle over when to let Anbar province take control of its own security, a row of broken-down Ford pickups in a Ramadi schoolyard offers a sobering picture of the readiness of the region's security forces.
The U.S. military gave the vehicles to the police stationed in a former school here, but the Iraqi government hasn't provided parts or a maintenance system to keep them running. The cops work on their own vehicles, picking parts from the junkers.
A shaky connection with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad is just one of the problems confronting American efforts to disengage from the predominantly Sunni Arab province more than a year after the U.S. military joined with local security forces, former insurgents and tribal warriors to take on al-Qaida in Iraq here.
A formal transfer from U.S. to Iraqi control over security in Anbar had been scheduled for early July, then put on indefinite hold after a suicide bomber targeted a town council meeting in the town of Karmah, killing three Marines and at least 22 Iraqis. The U.S. military initially blamed poor weather for the postponement, but several local leaders said the bombing showed that Iraqi security forces were still not prepared.
The hand-over will be a milestone in the war in Iraq, as a declaration of victory in the birthplace of the insurgency and a province that only two years ago was considered lost to al-Qaida in Iraq. The delay has put a damper on the hopes for a triumphant U.S. withdrawal soon.
Yet even as the ceremony hangs in limbo, Marines and Iraqi police in Ramadi are transferring the reins of security, little by little.
On a recent day, Capt. Jonathan Hamilton, commander of the weapons company of the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, dropped by the Forsan station, with its impromptu salvage yard.
For more than a year since the Forsan police station was established as an outpost in the abandoned school, a detachment of Marines had lived and worked there alongside the Iraqi police.
Now, Hamilton said, it was time for the station to stand on its own. The police force had proved its ability to maintain the rule of law in this provincial capital of 400,000.
Gradually the Marines are trying to demilitarize the city, Hamilton said. They're pulling out units that billeted in 11 police stations, rolling up their razor wire and withdrawing to bases outside the city.
