BAGHDAD — In an unannounced visit shrouded in secrecy, Vice President Joe Biden came to Iraq on Thursday for the first time in almost five years, in the hopes that he can help a weak prime minister and bolster the military campaign against the Islamic State.
But the intense security concerns and the clandestine nature of the trip demonstrated the challenges this country still faces 13 years after the U.S.-led invasion. And while the visit has been under discussion for months, Biden arrived as the country's political leadership is mired in yet another crisis.
Biden planned to meet with top Iraqi officials to urge them to put their nation's interests above sectarian, regional or personal ones as the country confronts a military threat from Islamic State militants, an economic crisis resulting from low oil prices and a political stalemate between Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and parliament over Abadi's efforts to reconstitute his Cabinet.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry also made unannounced visits to Iraq this month.
At a news conference last week in Saudi Arabia, President Barack Obama said U.S. officials had been telling their Iraqi counterparts that "they have to take the long view and think about the well-being of the country at a time when they're still fighting" the Islamic State.
"Now is not the time for government gridlock or bickering," he said.
Biden last visited Iraq in November 2011, just weeks before the last U.S. troops in Iraq were scheduled to leave. In a solemn ceremony, Biden saluted Iraqi troops, trained and equipped with billions of dollars from the United States, saying he hoped they would safeguard the country.
Three years later, those forces disintegrated in the face of an onslaught from Islamic State fighters and the inability of a corrupt central government to support and supply them.
The United States has added nearly 5,000 troops in Iraq, and it is using airstrikes and providing logistical support to bolster the country's slow campaign against the Islamic State, which still occupies large stretches of territory.
While the military campaign is showing signs of progress, U.S. officials fear that renewed political turmoil in the country could hinder it. In one example, enormous street protests led by Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, led Abadi to withdraw forces from the fight against the Islamic State to bolster security in Baghdad. The protests ended up being peaceful, and the troops were sent back to the front lines. But U.S. officials consider the redeployment a lesson in how political turmoil can be a troubling distraction.
In a speech a year ago at the National Defense University, Biden hailed Iraq's political class as having rallied from defeats to create a strong and united government. "Iraqi leaders can't afford to lose that sense of political urgency that brought them to this point," Biden said.
Since then, the political situation in Iraq has become so fluid that Biden's team was at times uncertain whether some officials on his meeting schedule would still be in office when he arrived.
"The United States has always put a bandage on the politics while concentrating on security, not realizing that the politics is the source of much of the worry on the security front," said Ramzy Mardini, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research institution.
But trying to fix Iraq's political woes has been a never-ending balancing act. Two years ago, U.S. officials supported the ouster of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who was viewed as too powerful, authoritarian and sectarian. Now, they are pushing to bolster Abadi, who is seen as too weak.
Even the recent gains in security have resolved little of Iraq's deep-seated woes, as hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians have been unable to return to recaptured territory and deadly sectarian and tribal rivalries that fed the conflict in those areas remain largely unresolved.
Iraq will need billions in aid to help reconstruct regions shattered by warfare, but U.S. officials fear that such aid will not be forthcoming until donor countries perceive that Iraq's politics are more settled.
And as the military campaign approaches Mosul, a multiethnic and multisectarian city, delicate negotiations between Kurdish forces in the semiautonomous north and those of the central government will be needed to determine who does what, U.S. officials said.
Retaking Mosul by the end of the year is a goal of Obama's, although in a recent interview he did not say when he expected that to happen.
"My expectation is that by the end of the year, we will have created the conditions whereby Mosul will eventually fall," Obama told Charlie Rose of CBS.
In his talks with officials, Biden is expected to urge all sides in Iraq to unite behind a single plan to retake Mosul.