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Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel landed in Iraq Tuesday to meet with U.S. military and Iraqi leaders prosecuting the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi told Hagel that the U.S.-led campaign of more than 1,200 airstrikes has hurt ISIL, according to a pool report relayed via Twitter by reporters traveling with Hagel. Even so, the terror group still has plenty of heavy equipment and remains able to move it and combatants back and forth between Syria and Iraq, according to the report.

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Defense officials had debated scrapping Hagels visit to Iraq after The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times briefly reported Friday he was planning to travel there. News organizations are sometimes invited on such trips under ground rules they not reveal the arrangements beforehand to protect operational security. A Journal reporters tweet about Hagels trip, and a mention of it in a Times story, were removed after a few hours online Friday and defense officials ultimately concluded it was safe for him to go.

Hagel is the first defense secretary to visit Iraq since 2011, when Leon Panetta traveled there as the American military presence was winding down. Panetta has since written that, at the time, he and Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter now tapped as Hagels successor were pressing President Barack Obama to push harder for Iraq to permit about 10,000 American troops to stay in Iraq and continue training its army. As it happened, Obama essentially shrugged, per Panetta, and all the U.S. troops came home.

That decision and Obamas handling of the civil war in neighboring Syria, according to critics set in motion a chain of events that led to the rise of ISIL, the implosion of Iraqs army and the present crises in the two countries. After the U.S. spent about $25 billion training and equipping Iraqs military, it has resolved to start over again with units that Obama hopes will go on the offensive next year against ISIL in the west and north of Iraq.

Hagel, meanwhile, wasnt up to the job of seriously executing that strategy, according to White House officials, and so Obama asked for his resignation late last month. Officials in Hagels camp say the secretary had his own long-standing objections to Obamas indecisiveness and micromanagement, and he opted to leave on his own. Carter appears likely to be confirmed by the new Republican Senate early next year.

Meanwhile, a new detachment of about 1,500 troops is set to head to Iraq to increase the training and equipping of Iraqs military and its Sunni tribesmen in its western Anbar Province. And on Monday, the U.S. Central Command established a full-time command to take control of operations in Iraq and Syria: Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, with its headquarters in Kuwait under the command of Army Lt. Gen. James Terry.

Terry told reporters traveling with Hagel that other countries that have joined the Joint Task Force are expected to commit trainers of their own to join the American troops.

Those European or Middle Eastern forces could approximately equal the number of American trainers, a spokesman said, but officials dont yet have a concrete estimate for the final training presence as the negotiations are still underway.

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Hagel in Iraq to confer on ISIL strategy