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Authors: Patrick Cockburn
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firing missiles at Taliban fighters. It is highly doubtful that Iraqi airpower is capable of carrying out such precision attacks; it later resorted to dropping random barrel bombs stuffed with explosives on Fallujah. The failure to take back Fallujah over a period of six months, and the need to invent even token victories for the Iraqi army, showed the real weakness of Iraq’s million-strong security forces—350,000 soldiers and 650,000 police—something that was to be revealed even more starkly when ISIS swept away government authority across northern and western Iraq in June 2014.
Such deceptions are not all on the government side. A year previously, in December 2012, the arrest of the bodyguards of the moderate Sunni finance minister, Rafi al-Issawi, by the government led to widespread but peaceful protests in Sunni provinces in northern and central Iraq. Sunni Arabs make up about a fifth of Iraq’s 33 million population. At first, the demonstrationswere well attended, with protesters demanding an end to political, civil, and economic discrimination against the Sunni community. But soon they realized that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was offering only cosmetic changes and many stopped attending the weekly demonstrations.
In the Sunni city of Tikrit, capital of Salah ad-Din province, 10,000 people had at first come to rallies, but the number then sank to just 1,000. A local observer reported: “It was decided that all mosques should be shut on Fridays except for one, forcing all the faithful to go to the same mosque for Friday prayers. Cameras eagerly filmed and photographed the crowd to make it look like they were all protesters and the images were beamed back to the Gulf, where their paymasters were fooled (or maybe they weren’t) into thinking that the protests were still attracting large numbers.” The eyewitness in Tikrit suggests cynically that the money supposedly spent on feeding and transporting nonexistent demonstrators was pocketed by protest leaders. The message was not that the Sunni were less angry than before but that peaceful protest was mutating into armed resistance.
These two stories illustrate an important political truth about contemporary Iraq: neither the government norany of the constitutional political movements are as strong as they pretend to be. Power is divided, and these divisions have helped ISIS to emerge far stronger and more speedily in Iraq than anybody expected.
Though ISIS had gained momentum and notoriety leading up to June 2014, their victory in Mosul came as a major surprise—even to ISIS itself. “Enemies and supporters alike are flabbergasted,” said ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani. It is difficult to think of any examples in history when security forces a million strong, including fifteen divisions, have crumbled so quickly after attacks from an enemy force that has been estimated at 6,000. Key to making this possible was the fact that the Sunni population as a whole, sensing that an end to its oppression was at hand, was prepared to lend at least their tacit support.
The lack of morale and discipline in the Iraqi army was evidently also a major factor. Asked about the Iraqi military’s cause of defeat, one recently retired Iraqi general was emphatic: “Corruption! Corruption! Corruption!” It started, he said, when the Americans told the Iraqi army to outsource food and other supplies around 2005. A battalion commander was paid for a unit of 600 soldiers, but had only 200 men under arms and pocketed the difference, which meant enormousprofits. The army became a money-making machine for senior officers and often an extortion racket for ordinary soldiers who manned the checkpoints. On top of this, well-trained Sunni officers were sidelined. “Iraq did not really have a national army,” the general concluded.
Corruption in the military took place at every level. A general could become a divisional commander at a cost of $2 million and would then have to
Such deceptions are not all on the government side. A year previously, in December 2012, the arrest of the bodyguards of the moderate Sunni finance minister, Rafi al-Issawi, by the government led to widespread but peaceful protests in Sunni provinces in northern and central Iraq. Sunni Arabs make up about a fifth of Iraq’s 33 million population. At first, the demonstrationswere well attended, with protesters demanding an end to political, civil, and economic discrimination against the Sunni community. But soon they realized that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was offering only cosmetic changes and many stopped attending the weekly demonstrations.
In the Sunni city of Tikrit, capital of Salah ad-Din province, 10,000 people had at first come to rallies, but the number then sank to just 1,000. A local observer reported: “It was decided that all mosques should be shut on Fridays except for one, forcing all the faithful to go to the same mosque for Friday prayers. Cameras eagerly filmed and photographed the crowd to make it look like they were all protesters and the images were beamed back to the Gulf, where their paymasters were fooled (or maybe they weren’t) into thinking that the protests were still attracting large numbers.” The eyewitness in Tikrit suggests cynically that the money supposedly spent on feeding and transporting nonexistent demonstrators was pocketed by protest leaders. The message was not that the Sunni were less angry than before but that peaceful protest was mutating into armed resistance.
These two stories illustrate an important political truth about contemporary Iraq: neither the government norany of the constitutional political movements are as strong as they pretend to be. Power is divided, and these divisions have helped ISIS to emerge far stronger and more speedily in Iraq than anybody expected.
Though ISIS had gained momentum and notoriety leading up to June 2014, their victory in Mosul came as a major surprise—even to ISIS itself. “Enemies and supporters alike are flabbergasted,” said ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani. It is difficult to think of any examples in history when security forces a million strong, including fifteen divisions, have crumbled so quickly after attacks from an enemy force that has been estimated at 6,000. Key to making this possible was the fact that the Sunni population as a whole, sensing that an end to its oppression was at hand, was prepared to lend at least their tacit support.
The lack of morale and discipline in the Iraqi army was evidently also a major factor. Asked about the Iraqi military’s cause of defeat, one recently retired Iraqi general was emphatic: “Corruption! Corruption! Corruption!” It started, he said, when the Americans told the Iraqi army to outsource food and other supplies around 2005. A battalion commander was paid for a unit of 600 soldiers, but had only 200 men under arms and pocketed the difference, which meant enormousprofits. The army became a money-making machine for senior officers and often an extortion racket for ordinary soldiers who manned the checkpoints. On top of this, well-trained Sunni officers were sidelined. “Iraq did not really have a national army,” the general concluded.
Corruption in the military took place at every level. A general could become a divisional commander at a cost of $2 million and would then have to
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