At dawn on June 6, 2014, hundreds of four-wheel drive vehicles laden with fighters of the Islamic State (ISIS) crossed the desert on the border of western Iraq with eastern Syria without hindrance.

A black flag fluttered over each car, which spoke of its owners, the famous fighters at the time, in addition to a machine gun directed at everyone.

Soon, ISIS fighters overthrew a number of Iraqi and Syrian cities, one after the other, until they reached the vital northern city of Mosul. Their cars roamed the streets of the city, with the crucified and burnt corpses of Iraqi soldiers in the forefront.

Within four days, the fighters took control of the entire city, coinciding with the withdrawal and flight of three divisions from the Iraqi army, estimated at 50,000 fighters, leaving behind their military uniforms and tons of the latest American weapons and equipment, including tanks that became in the possession of the organization, with which it continued the task of control. On a third of the area of ​​​​Iraq, the organization soon announced a few weeks later the alleged "Islamic caliphate" in the heart of the Great Mosque of Mosul.

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Those security collapses sent quick messages to the United States, which sensed a huge danger of the complete fall of Iraq more than a decade after its invasion.

Before that moment, no one would have expected the rapid withdrawal of the army, which numbered about 600 thousand fighters, and the United States spent more than $ 25 billion in training it, in addition to the billions of dollars that the Iraqi authorities spent on American weapons such as "F-16" fighters and helicopters. Apaches, M-1 tanks, Hellfire missiles and other weapons.

The US Secretary of Defense at the time, Ashton Carter, said that the Iraqi army did not have the intention or the will to fight a few thousand jihadists, in a veiled reference to betrayal in the first ranks of the army commanders.

With the difficulty of finding logical reasons for what happened, the established fact remains that the United States has for decades practiced contradictory policies towards the Iraqi army. It supported it at times with billions of dollars, and at other times aimed at weakening it after the overthrow of the regime of "Saddam Hussein" and hindered the emergence of an army as strong as its predecessor before the invasion.

Before the invasion, Iraq occupied its place among the strongest armies in the region, before it collapsed after 2003. Various obstacles at home and abroad that emanated from the structure of the state and the new politics in Iraq over the past two decades stand against attempts to revive it.

The Iraqi army.. History alone is not enough

Iraqi forces parade in front of former President "Saddam Hussein" in Baghdad, December 31, 2000. (Reuters)

Throughout its nearly 100-year history since its founding in 1921, the Iraqi army fought five major regular wars, namely the Palestine War in 1948, the October War in 1973 when the Iraqis stopped the Israeli attack on Damascus, the bloody Iraqi-Iranian war in 1980, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1980. 1990 and Operation Desert Storm that followed, and finally the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Over the course of those wars, the soldiers of the Iraqi army fought in different and sometimes contradictory circumstances.

He was an Arab partner fighting within the Arab ranks regionally during the Palestine War and after it in the October War, then he fought against the Arabs during the invasion of Kuwait after Washington allied with most of the major Arab countries to respond to the Iraqi aggression, and between them in the war with Iran that lasted nearly a decade and led to the death of A million people, the Sunni-Shia sectarian element emerged for the first time, especially since the Iraqi army included in its ranks tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites who were recruited to fight for the regime against the regime of the Islamic revolution in Iran, although a large segment of them naturally sympathized with the Shiite revolution and its leader, Aya God Khomeini.

Independent of other Arab armies, then, the Iraqi army experienced by itself the various military doctrines and their national, sectarian and regional complexities.

In order to understand the current ideological impasse and the extent of the sectarian division within the army that dates back to before 2003, we may have to go back to the role of the Najaf Hawza (the highest religious authority for the Shiites of Iraq) during the Iranian war, when the Shiite reference at the time, Ayatollah Al-Khoei, refused to issue a fatwa. Join the army, and was under house arrest after saying: "Saddam Hussein shed enough Shiite blood."

Then the dilemma arose more when the United States invaded Iraq, and the Hawza refrained from issuing a fatwa on jihad against the occupier. Rather, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest Shiite authority at the time, issued a fatwa calling on his supporters to be neutral and not resist the American forces, a fatwa that played an influential role in Overthrowing the Baath regime, which some blamed for its anti-Shia policies throughout its period of tyranny in power.

In a short period of no more than two weeks after the invasion, the American civil administrator who ruled Iraq, "Paul Bremer," ordered the dissolution of the Iraqi army, which consisted of 400,000 soldiers at the time, and the dismantling of the intelligence institutions and security services.

(The island)

And when the United States finished overthrowing Saddam and his regime, the Iraqi army became an undesirable element in Washington's eyes.

In a short period of no more than two weeks after the invasion, the American civil administrator who ruled Iraq, "Paul Bremer," ordered the dissolution of the army, consisting of 400,000 soldiers at the time, the dismantling of intelligence institutions and security services, the dissolution of the Baath Party, and the prevention of senior Baath officials from holding government positions.

On the other hand, the star of the new Shiite political forces that won the favor of Washington and Tehran alike has risen, despite the hostility of the two countries, and thus created a new equation for governance according to which the Shiite element dominated and its Sunni counterpart was marginalized, in contrast to the situation in the time of Saddam.

Paradoxically, some of the remaining Iraqi army officers, and within one decade, joined ISIS in an explicit manifestation of the sectarian continuum that drew and still is the fate of the state and weapons in Iraq, especially when the organization gave them salaries greater than those they received after retirement, which ranged between 50 And $150 a month.

Their rise continued until they reached the position of the second man within the organization (Iyad al-Jumaili, al-Baghdadi’s deputy, was an officer in the Iraqi intelligence service during Saddam’s era), seeking revenge only, as well as close ties to al-Baghdadi himself, as the leaders of the first row were prisoners with him during American occupation.

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Weak army..and strong militias

Al-Maliki's policies contributed to the weakening of the Iraqi army, as the man feared a possible coup if he cared about re-establishing a real army, especially in a country that has a long history of coup attempts and politicization of the army.

(Getty Images)

The dissolution of the old Iraqi army based on loyalty to the Baath Party and the establishment of another army in its place within three months was not a simple process, as it seemed to its owners at first glance.

The new regime, which was dominated by Shiite forces, was not democratic in the Western sense, but was based in essence on a sectarian quota system between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds after the 2006 elections, which were won by former Prime Minister "Nuri al-Maliki."

Hence, the new army became a center for these sectarian rivalries, and the Shiite house dominated the army leadership, and although the new military institution was virtually inexperienced after demobilizing an entire generation of Sunni officers, the new authority pressured the United States to train and equip hundreds of thousands of army and police officers. Iraqis as soon as possible, without necessarily ensuring the quality of the results of these preparations.

More importantly, Maliki's policies themselves contributed to the weakening of the Iraqi army. The man also feared a possible coup if he cared about re-establishing a real army, especially in a country that has a long history of coup attempts and politicization of the army.

The first coup in the Arab countries after independence took place at the hands of the Iraqi army when Lieutenant General Bakr Sidqi overthrew the government 86 years ago, followed by a series of coups that ended with the inauguration of Saddam Hussein, and the man quickly benefited from reading the scene, giving the Republican Guard forces a unique position in the military establishment. , and made it a major offensive force that surpasses the regular army in its ability to be a loyal guard for the nascent coup regime at that time.

The idea of ​​establishing a parallel military entity, then, was not new to Iraq to besiege the army politically. Al-Maliki followed the same approach and established a parallel army, making the forces of the Anti-Terrorism Service (which was later called “Maliki’s Private Army”).

) outside the authority of the Ministries of Defense and Interior, and used it to attack opponents and intimidate senior critics, and also created a network of loyalties by promoting trusted officers at the expense of qualified ones, with the continuous ideological liquidation of potential opponents.

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In the end, the United States succeeded in weakening the Iraqi army as it wanted, and the Iraqi rulers followed suit after the invasion by neglecting training. The army’s strength and morale eroded, and corruption struck it from every side, so that the army became a profitable business for senior officers, as the records of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense revealed. Fifty thousand fake names of Iraqi officers whose allocations used to go to senior officers for years without being watched or accounted for.

These practices contributed to providing false information about the strength and effectiveness of the army, before the defining moment came suddenly with the fall of Mosul in 2014. Those leaders were exposed and fled the field, leaving their soldiers to be massacred at the hands of the Islamic State, which defeated the Iraqi security forces without much resistance.

Although the annual security sector budget is greater than the education, health and environment budgets in Iraq combined, along with tens of billions provided by Washington since 2006, the Iraqis were surprised that their forces did not have the appropriate weapons to fight, and that many of the armament contracts were a figment of the imagination.

While many thought that the task of stopping the expansion of the state organization that swallowed up a third of Iraq would go to the regular army, the military establishment would never have succeeded in reality without the direct support of the counter-terrorism apparatus, and the support of the "Popular Mobilization" militia, which was formed according to the fatwa of "competent jihad" that It was launched by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in 2014. These militias were formed to take up arms and fill the void left by the collapse of the army.

However, the establishment of the crowd represented an important turning point, as its numbers, powers, and influence have expanded since then.

Between the hammer of Washington and the anvil of Tehran

Neither the army nor any political authority in Iraq can theoretically issue a decision to dissolve the popular crowd militia, not even the Sistani religious authority himself who issued a fatwa establishing it.

(Reuters)

The Iraqi army is currently ranked 34th in the world and fourth in the Arab world, according to the classification of the American “Global Fire Power” website, and it has achieved a leap in that classification after its rank in 2021 was sixth in the Arab world and 57th in the world out of a total of 140 countries included in the index.

And while Iraq theoretically achieved a remarkable leap by advancing 23 ranks, but that classification does not reflect the real reality in which Iraq or its army is living, in addition to that it was affected by the state of political impasse and the complexities of forming the government that prevented the approval of the budget for the fiscal year 2022, before finally settling on the Prime Minister, "Muhammad." Al-Sudani's funeral" last October after a political crisis that lasted throughout the year, the longest since the American invasion.

At the heart of this crisis is the dilemma of structuring the Iraqi army, which has not yet overcome the deep wounds inflicted on it after the decision to disband it in 2003, and then form a new army, which opened the door to the spread of carrying arms outside the legal framework of the state and the increase in the number of militias, which provide their followers with financial privileges. and political.

Meanwhile, the regular military faces the threat of aging due to the abolition of conscription.

While the number of those willing to enlist is decreasing, the official papers indicate an increase in military expenditures in exchange for a decrease in the number of workers.

For example, the value of military appropriations in the general budget for the year 2021 amounted to about $18.7 billion, which prompted Parliament to discuss the compulsory re-conscription bill, especially with the reluctance of young people to do so.

The lack of numbers in the regular army had previously prompted the United States to stop training programs, as Iraqis have so far preferred to join parallel armed entities such as the “Popular Mobilization Forces”, as Nuri al-Maliki had previously issued a decision that allowed Iranian-backed militias to have an official role in fighting ISIS, such as the militia "Badr", which won the portfolio of the Ministry of Interior in the previous government.

Moreover, the authority to make field decisions was withdrawn from the army after the establishment of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief, which attached military command tasks directly to the presidency, something that increased the attractiveness of working in paramilitary institutions.

Although the law obliges these entities to submit to the authority of the Minister of Defense, the reality indicates that they have greater authority than him, and even the army finds itself forced to deal with them, even though they have often limited their influence.

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Nuri al-Maliki previously issued a decree allowing Iran-backed militias to have an official role in the fight against ISIS, such as the "Badr" militia, which won the portfolio of the Ministry of Interior and its minister, "Qasim al-Araji" in the previous government.

(Reuters)

Neither the army nor any political authority in Iraq can theoretically issue a decision to dissolve the popular crowd militia, not even the Sistani religious authority himself who issued a fatwa establishing it.

On this issue, "Rang Alaeddin", a visiting fellow at the Brookings Center, says: "This (Sistani's dissolution of the popular crowd) may result in undermining the Shiite religious establishment in Iraq."

However, the biggest impediment to the army is the political system itself on which the country has been based since the 2006 elections, as it implicitly entrenched the principle of sectarian quotas in state institutions.

Through the demonstrations that began in October 2019, Iraqis demanded an end to this policy and the establishment of a real civil government in Iraq, but these are calls that have not yet been achieved.

During the recent parliamentary elections, Iraq was stuck for nearly a year in a constitutional vacuum, from which it could only get out by returning to the quota system, with the exception of the Sadrist movement, which led the elections and decided to withdraw from parliament.

This has affected the regular army, which has become accused of being the army of the next prime minister's bloc, whatever its name, as if it were another military entity and a party in the political game, not a military institution that represents the entity of the Iraqi state and transcends everyone.

The army, currently in search of itself, has no choice but to fight its battle with the government so that its financial allocations will not be reduced on the grounds that the country does not need war in light of the stifling economic crisis.

At a time when it seeks to get out of the umbrella of American support, and diversify its sources of armament by purchasing advanced defense systems from different countries, including French Rafale fighters, drones, advanced artillery, and more Russian T-90 tanks (which it is already using), according to what was published by the website. American Defense News.

The official Iraq News Agency confirmed this news from a security source, and indicated plans to increase tanks, teams and battalions in order to enhance the capabilities of the Iraqi army with the help of several countries, including Russia, France and Pakistan.

The bottom line is that the Iraqi army has long been viewed with suspicion by its neighbors, who are still apprehensive about its rise again.

For Iran, he is a potential enemy that may enjoy the support of its great Sunni opponent represented in Saudi Arabia, which supported him in the past against the Iranian regime during the long Iraq-Iranian war in the 1980s.

However, at the same time, it may worry Riyadh and the Arab Gulf states if it is eventually controlled by the Shiite majority close to Tehran.

In the midst of all this, the Iraqi army itself is still required to be the unified army of Iraq, and not just one of competing military entities, which is a difficult task in light of the dominance of the militias that are stronger than it politically and militarily until the moment, and they are entities that have no interest whatsoever in the establishment of the army from new.

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Sources:

1- The State Organization called ISIS (Part Two), Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.

COALITION PROVISONAL AUTHORITY ORDER NUMBER- 2. 

3- COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY ORDER NUMBER 22. CREATION OF A NEW IRAQI ARMY.

4-David Witty

The Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service.

5- Your Country Needs You: Iraq's Faltering Military Recruitment Campaign.

6- Saddam Hussein's army is the secret of Al-Baghdadi's success