Does
the Iraqi Army exist?
Official reports of
the recent assault on Fallujah rarely failed to mention that the Iraqi Army
played an active part, alongside US Marines, though there wasn’t much evidence
of this on camera, except for the initial “capture” of a hospital, when an
Iraqi soldier shot himself in the foot.
Earlier in the year,
it was clear that Iraqi soldiers were understandably reluctant to fight fellow
Iraqis alongside Americans, and deserted in droves. One had the impression that most had signed up in order to get a
paid job, and had no intention of fighting Iraqis, and that some had joined in
order to get armed and trained for very different purposes, as a US Marine
openly stated on Channel 4 News before the assault on Fallujah started.
After the initial mass
desertions, the official mantra was that the Iraqi Army needed more training,
as if training (of some unspecified kind) by foreigners would make Iraqis more
enthusiastic for fighting and killing fellow Iraqis. The other change mooted, and apparently enacted to some degree,
was that Ba’athist officers be remobilised and put in charge. This didn’t seem to make much sense if the
Army was to be used to put down resistance to the occupation in Sunni
areas.
Ba’athification was
tried in Fallujah, when the US Marine assault on the city was called off by the
White House last April. At that point,
control of the city was handed over to the so-called Fallujah Brigade, made up
of around 1,600 members of the old Iraqi Army and Republican Guard, led by
former Ba’athist officers. Jasim
Muhammed Salih, a former chief of staff of a Republican Guard brigade, was
appointed commander. He didn’t last
long, allegedly because of his past, and Mohammed Abdul Latif, a former
Ba’athist intelligence officer took over.
The Marines armed the
Brigade with semi-automatic rifles, provided them with vehicles and furnished a
base for them. The Marines stayed
outside Fallujah and maintained only nominal contact with it. Theoretically, the Brigade was supposed to
contain the resistance and apprehend those responsible for killing the four US
security personnel, whose deaths had been the trigger for the original US
assault. In reality, the Brigade went
native, and became part of the resistance.
In September the US quietly disbanded it. It had not been a happy experience for the Marines.
The Los Angeles Times of 11
September contained a very interesting account of the Brigade and its
disbandment by Alissa Rubin (see http://middleeastinfo.org/article4734.html). She
quotes the Marine colonel responsible for liaison with the Brigade as saying:
“The
Fallujah Brigade is done, over. … The whole Fallujah Brigade thing was a
fiasco. Initially it worked out OK, but it wasn't a good idea for very long. … We're trying to go in and recover the stuff we gave them,
but I'm not sure it's worth it. They’ve
already stolen the air conditioners.”
When its disbandment
was announced, Rubin reports:
“Discontent rippled through
the group, many of whose members had hoped that it would remain intact and
eventually become a unit of the new army. Judging by members’ comments, it
seemed likely that some would openly rejoin the insurgency, in which many had
been involved before joining the brigade.”
And she
reports a Brigadier General saying: “We don't know where to go now after this
dismissal by the American troops and the Iraqi interim government. They leave us no other option, but to join
the resistance.”
As an instrument for
rooting out the resistance, the Fallujah Brigade was, as the Marine colonel
said, a fiasco.
However, it appears
that Ba’athification in the Iraqi Army (and elsewhere in the state apparatus)
has continued, and perhaps accelerated now that the ex-Ba’athist, Ayad Allawi,
has been appointed by Washington to be Interim Prime Minister. That would make sense since Allawi’s
organisation, the Iraqi National Accord, is made up largely of former
Ba’athists, both military and political.
An article by Sama
Hadad, entitled Fallujah’s
Lesson for Iraq (published by openDemocracy on 18 November) paints
an extraordinary picture of ex-Ba’athists appointed by Allawi being later
discovered to be connected to the resistance, beginning with Amer al-Hashimi, who had been made made Army Chief of
Staff:
“Al-Hashimi, a former
major-general in Saddam’s army (and Salafist), was fired in August
after being exposed for supplying Salafi insurgents with intelligence
and promoting them to high ranks in the new Iraqi army. Al-Hashimi’s
replacement was Mohammed Abdul-Qadr, former Ba’athist governor of Mosul and
deputy chief of staff under Saddam; but even more worrying is that al-Hashimi
himself was later appointed an advisor to the ministry of defence.
“Allawi’s policy was
reflected also in the appointment of Talib al-Sama Lahibi as commander of the
new Iraqi National Guard for the province of Diyala. Al-Lahibi, a former Saddam
officer, was arrested in September when it came to light he was leading –
rather than attempting to suppress – the insurgency in the province.
“But Allawi’s gravest
re-Ba’athification blunder was his appointment of Yousef Khalaf Mahmood as head
of security for the Iraqi interim cabinet. Mahmood was arrested at the end of
October after the discovery that he was working with the insurgents and had
supplied them with the names and addresses of every government official and
ministerial member of staff – six of whom (including family members) have been
murdered in their homes. This blunder will keep insurgents busy for months to
come.”
I
cannot vouch for the accuracy of all this, but I have no specific reason for
doubting any of it.
(The author, Sama Hadad, is a spokeswoman
for the Iraqi Prospect Organisation, which describes itself as a pro-democracy
group based in Baghdad and London. She
was exiled from Iraq as an infant.
Before the war, she was an enthusiastic supporter of US military
intervention to overthrow Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist regime.)
Kurdish militia?
So who were the Iraqi troops who
allegedly stood shoulder to shoulder with the US Marines in Fallujah this
time? Were they officered by
ex-Ba’athists? It was widely reported that
a senior Kurdish officer deserted before the assault began. However, according to Scott Ritter on Al
Jazeera on 9 November, they were all Kurdish; they were, in fact, a Kurdish
militia unit. He says:
“The
battle for Falluja is supposed to be the proving ground of the new Iraq
Army. Instead, it may well prove to be
a fatal pill. The reality is there is no Iraqi Army. Of the tens of thousands recruited into its ranks, there is today
only one effective unit, the 36th Battalion.
“This unit
has fought side by side with the Americans in Falluja, Najaf, and Samara. By all accounts, it has performed well. But this unit can only prevail when it
operates alongside overwhelming American military support. Left to fend for
itself, it would be slaughtered by the resistance fighters. Worse, this unit
which stands as a symbol of the ideal for the new Iraqi Army is actually the
antithesis of what the new Iraqi Army should be.
“While
the Bush administration has suppressed the formation of militia units organized
along ethnic and religious lines, the 36th Battalion should be recognized for
what it really is - a Kurdish militia,
retained by the US military because the rest of the Iraqi Army is unwilling or
unable to carry the fight to the Iraqi resistance fighters.”
Is
this all true? I don’t know for sure,
but, as a former US marine officer, Ritter should have access to reliable
sources for such information.
(For
another account of Iraqi troops working with US soldiers, see an article
entitled Shadow
of Vietnam Falls Over Iraq River Raids by John Burns
in the New York Times on 29 November.
There, the Iraqi troops patrolling along the Euphrates near Fallujah are
described as “a special Iraqi commando unit assigned to the country’s
powerful Interior Ministry”, many of whom are “drawn from elite units of Saddam
Hussein's special forces”. They seemed
to be unenthusiastic soldiers, with a tendency to be insubordinate towards
their US officers.)
POSTSCRIPT
On
2 December, the CBS evening news ran a piece on deliberate misinformation supplied
by the US military in connection with Fallujah. Two items were mentioned:
one was informing CNN that the assault had started some three weeks
before it actually started, the purpose being, it was said, to get the
resistance to expose their positions by firing on the US military; the second
was continual exaggeration of the role played by Iraqi troops.
Labour
& Trade Union Review
December 2004