In a visit to the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service Academy, Carter was briefed on U.S. efforts to train and advise Iraqi special forces.
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The visit, however, comes at an important moment for the Iraqi government, which has announced a counteroffensive to retake Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.
Mr Carter was to meet Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Sunni Arab tribal leaders from Anbar, the province where much of the fighting has taken place in recent weeks.
A senior US defence official said Iraq had shown some “positive momentum” in its engagement with Sunnis in the past months.
“This is a development we are very satisfied to hear”, Warren said. “In fact, one of the coalition-trained units was able to maneuver a full six kilometers just in the last 24 hours”.
Warren said Dempsey and the commander of US forces in the Middle East, General Lloyd Austin, do not now recommend the inclusion of US forces in the ground assault on Ramadi.
Analysts say without American soldiers on the ground now, however, it has been tough for the U.S.to persuade tribal leaders their interests lie with supporting the Shi’ite-dominated government in Baghdad, and not aligning with IS.
He also spent time with some of the 3,500 US troops stationed there and the local counter-terrorism forces they had trained, according to posts on his official Facebook page.
The Iraqi government intends to exclude all Shi’ite militias from the operation, even those under control of the Iraqi government.
American officials hope that fielding the US-trained troops around Ramadi will yield the first signs that the Iraqi army is regaining its footing a year after it partially collapsed in the face of the Islamic State’s advances. “We in the United States have been not only supportive of, but admiring of your efforts in that regard, and thank you”. But Warren said they haven’t done so yet.
Websites linked to Islamic State claimed that the radical Sunni group was responsible for the attack, the latest in a series of deadly bombings in Iraq.
An Iraqi intelligence official speaking on the condition of anonymity said Baghdad expects the fight over Fallujah, Anbar’s second largest city after Ramadi, to be a protracted affair. That frank assessment exposed a central Iraqi weakness born of the country’s sectarian split. They became part of the Islamic State’s arsenal and were then targeted in U.S. airstrikes.
If the Sunnis join in the assault, they will not exactly fall under the Iraqi army chain of command.
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Col. Warren put the number of jihadist fighters defending the city at 1,000 to 2,000.
