Tutoring Iraq's Military to Defend Iraq

"But by the same token, if they're not ready, if the conditions are not set, if all the equipment they need is not physically there and they (aren't) trained to a degree in which they will be successful, we have not closed the door on continuing to slide that to the right."
Senior (unnamed) U.S. military official

AP Photo   In this photo taken June 25, 2014, ISIS fighters parade in the northern city of Mosul, Iraq, two weeks after taking control of the country's second largest city.

The plan is to be advanced for the United States to commit yet again to training and equipping Iraqi forces to enable them to gain the confidence and the skills required to regain their country's territory captured so easily by the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham back in June. At that time, while ISIS militias marched through parts of Syria and Iraq meeting little-to-no opposition, Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, fell easily, while opposition dissolved as the Iraqi military fled in panic.

Leaving ISIS to take possession not only of the city of Mosul, but its central bank and army barracks, along with the U.S.-derived modern military equipment that the Iraqi military was coached so painstakingly, to use to greatest advantage. The advantage turned to the Islamic State, as it commandeered all the arms and rolling stock, and hundreds of millions from the bank that lent itself as readily to looting as did the military installations.

The Sunni majority population of Mosul, for far too long marginalized by the Shia-led government in Baghdad likely viewed the Islamic State presence as auguring well for their own future in Iraq. If the U.S. is counting on a repeat of their success years earlier in persuading the Iraqi Sunni tribes to join in combat against al-Qaeda, to have the Sunnis in Mosul turn against Islamic State, the sight of Shi'ite militias entering Mosul may just have the opposite effect.


Only in Kurdish areas of Iraq was there any meaningful push-back by dedicated Peshmerga fighters determined not to lose one inch of the territory that they planned would pave the way for their future state. As ISIS militias planned to march on to Baghdad, the country was on the cusp of falling into their deadly hands, until the United States brought together a coalition of like-minded nations determined to halt their advance.

Beyond air assaults on Islamic State positions, however, none of the countries engaged in the U.S.-led air mission had any plans to deploy their nationals on the ground. That would be the work of the Iraqi military. Aided by Iran's Republican Guards and Shi'ite militias. Now, the U.S. Central Command states that five Iraqi Army brigades are to undergo coalition training in Iraq -- once again -- in the hope that they will eventually prove capable of defining themselves as a capable military.

Former Mosul police and tribal forces are expected to ready themselves to return to the city at such time as the army units banish the Islamic State fighters. Planned is a brigade of Iraqi counterterrorism forces trained by U.S. special operations forces; the dozen planned brigades to be comprised of two thousand troops each. Training, air support, intelligence and surveillance to be supplied by the U.S.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters stand guard on the outskirts of Mosul (Reuters/Azad Lashkari)

Now here's another figure; officials have made an estimate of the number of Islamic State insurgents holding the city of Mosul. That number hovers between one thousand and two thousand ISIS fighters. So then, it will take between 20,000 and 25,000 Iraqi troops, including Shi'ite militias, and Peshmerga fighters if they can be persuaded to move into that portion of the country to give aid, to remove less than one-tenth their strength in numbers from Mosul...?

Now, that is truly impressive.