“About 11,000 are missing in action, 10,000 were killed in action and most of the rest are simply absent without leave,” Dr Hashimi said. Even the country’s vaunted Special Operations forces were depleted by 35 per cent, he said.
Another source who had observed the Iraqi Army at close quarters for some years explained the concept of the military “alien”, a soldier who, even in the midst of a national security crisis such as that now facing Iraq, cuts a deal with his senior officers to split his salary in return for not having to front for duty.
In Anbar, the vast western province that IS is on the verge of capturing, the “alien” problem means the official strength of the army divisions in the fight is 60,000 – but only 20,000 men are actually on the ground.
Soldiers also buy days off duty, paying the equivalent of $US20-$US30 a day to their officers for permission to absent themselves.
Most senior officers pay $US1 million or more to buy their rank – and the opportunities for patronage and corruption that go with it. The retired general told me: “It’s like a market – supply and demand. You have something that hundreds want, so of course they’ll pay.”
Citing well-heeled areas of Baghdad like Mansour and Karrada, another source explained: “Competition for officer positions in wealthy areas is especially fierce. That’s where there are liquor stores, parking lots and many shops – they extort money from all. The operator of a parking lot could pay $US2000-$US5000 a month to have the military direct all vehicles into his lot; and the liquor seller pays just so that he won’t be harassed.”
These commanders-turned-entrepreneurs regularly set revenue targets that had to be met by their subordinates, which resulted in many in the ranks having to buy their own food. In the 50-degree heat of summer some soldiers got only two to four 500ml bottles of drinking water a day.
And the US had a hand in this state of affairs, too. In the early days of the occupation in 2003, the decision was made by US officials that all division commanders would have their own budget to acquire food and other necessities from local private enterprise. The officers soon worked out that highway checkpoints were readymade “toll stations”, at which truckers were forced to pay a levy to pass.
All this explains a litany of local reports of army bases around the country surrendering while besieged by IS, and troops complaining later that their pleas for food, water and ammunition went unanswered. “When’s the last time you heard of IS being surrounded by Iraqi forces and running out of ammunition?” one source quipped.
Retired US general Jim Dubik, who led the US effort to train Iraqi forces in 2007-08 and who is now with a Washington think tank, told Reuters in June: “Their leadership has eroded. If you’re a fighter and you think your side’s going to lose, you don’t fight until the last man. You save yourself.”
But Anthony Cordesman, with the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, takes General Dubik’s training program to task: “The US tried to impose too many of its own approaches to military development on an Iraqi structure, and Iraq lacked the internal incentives, and checks and balances, necessary to make them function once US advisers were gone.
“As in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the US accomplished a great deal. But it tried to do far too much, too quickly with more emphasis on numbers than quality, and it grossly exaggerated unit quality in many cases … Successful force-building takes far longer than the US military was generally willing to admit, and US efforts to transform, rather than improve, existing military cultures and systems have often proved to be counterproductive and a waste of effort.”
The two generals who openly abandoned their troops in Mosul with hardly a shot fired were retired without charge and within days. One of them, Abboud Qanbar, shamelessly toasted the Baghdad establishment as he presided over a lavish wedding for his son at the Hunting Club in suburban Mansour. There are vocal calls for punishment, but none of the derelict officers has been formally charged, though many of Mr Maliki’s hundreds of personal appointments to the officer corps could be sidelined in a review of the military leadership promised by Iraq’s new Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi.
The 2003 decision by Paul Bremer, Washington’s envoy to Iraq, to completely disband the military required that it be rebuilt from the ground up – a “reckless decision that had huge negative impact”, one militia leader told me.
Again and again I was told the training by US and other coalition countries for the new force was inadequate – “it was all too brief, it was not reinforced and the army was deployed for too long doing what essentially was police work – manning checkpoints and the like weakened their morale”.
On the prospects of rebuilding the force, the retired general ruefully asked: “Do you think you can rebuild in two years what previously took 80 years to build? An army has to rise above religion and party policy, but the government wants to work with the militias that agree with its ministers.”
The confidence men
At the Defence Ministry headquarters on the banks of the Tigris River, a visitor is struck more by indolence than a sense of urgency. But chief spokesman Brigadier-General Mohammad al-Askari speaks with confidence – he acknowledged much of the fight was being taken to IS by the militias and tribal fighters, but he insisted too that reports that the capital might soon fall to IS were wildly exaggerated.
“IS does have sleeper cells in Baghdad, but what is their size? If they have tens of people in a city of millions, it’s not the same as the city being surrounded. Baghdad is secure and we have more troops here than we need.”
General Askari argued Iraqi Army units were mounting a serious challenge to the IS rampage across Anbar, a vast desert expanse stretching west from Baghdad to the Jordanian and Syrian borders.
“We control three major bases and we’re slowly expanding our area of operations,” he claimed, despite reports of a more tenuous ebb and flow in the Anbar fight. “We still need more troops and a lot of international cooperation – logistics and air cover.
“But we’re better off than we were – we are on the offensive and things will start to improve.”
At the same time, he acknowledged that “Iraq was saved” in June when leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa urging Iraqis to volunteer to fight, thereby swelling the ranks of the militias more than those of the Iraqi Army.
“Everyone was abandoning the army, morale was in freefall, but the fatwa brought balance, nationalism and a sense of patriotism for the Shiites and Sunnis – our blood is mixed on the battlefield.”
Some battlefield success may bring a glimmer of hope. But in iconic contests, like the defeat in September of the IS siege of Amerli, 180 kilometres north of Baghdad, it was the banners of four militias, not that of the Iraqi Army, that were cheered by locals, and little was made of the US air cover that sealed the town’s relief.
Sheikh Abdul Hamid al-Juburi, described as being in control of all the Sunni tribes in central Salaheddin province, still has reservations. Over a grand tribal lunch, he told me: “The government troops are not up to this fight, they’re standard military fighting gangsters and because they don’t have sufficient numbers they disperse when they feel the heat.”
The sheikh, who has hundreds of his tribesmen fighting in wild clashes with IS across the province, likened the force of IS to water behind a dam, adding hopefully: “When we collapse the dam, there’s a huge gush of water, but then it becomes a small, manageable stream.”
The country has a new prime minister who is promising change and reform. But some Iraqi observers are not holding their breath. “The same players are there as he reshuffles the seats – and IS just carries on, like a professional boxer attacking a bunch of kids,” one said.
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