AMU Homeland Security Intelligence Middle East Opinion

The Iraqi Army's Ghosts

By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security

Some 50,000 ‘ghost soldiers’ or fictitious names were discovered in the Iraqi army under the scrutiny of a corruption investigation by the government. That meant that those tens of thousands of troops did not report for duty or did not exist at all and that people were receiving pay unrelated to national service. Other cases saw soldiers taking less or no money for service or being told not to report. Officers that want more pay would often overestimate the number of their troops or tell some to go home and siphon off the funds.

“There are two kinds of fadhaiyin,” an officer in the security forces told AFP. “The first kind: each officer is allowed, for example, five guards. He’ll keep two, send three home and pocket their salary or an agreed percentage.”

“Then the second and bigger group is at the brigade level. A brigade commander usually has 30, 40 or more soldiers who stay at home or don’t exist. The problem is that he too, to keep his job as a brigade commander, has to bribe his own hierarchical superiors with huge amounts of money.”

Hamid al-Mutlaq, a member of the parliamentary defense and security committee, said “it could be more than triple this number.”

The investigation is a government-wide program of incoming Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. “We are losing money all the time,” Abadi said.

The finding was announced just today but they are expecting to find “more and more” in their crackdown on graft.

The news comes after U.S. funding to build and train an Iraqi military mounted in the 25 billion range that saw the evaporation of its military before advancing ISIL forces to its second largest city, Mosul. A 32 year old police officer named Amar said, “This army is not prepared to fight. Nobody trusts anyone, not even from their own sect.” Such conditions made funding and potentially training an irrelevant factor.

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton said, “The army became Maliki’s private militia.” Former Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is also accused of intimidating, kidnapping, torturing and assassinating Sunni Muslims while at the same time weaving together a Shiite Muslim nation.

In spite of all the U.S. money, time and exceptional training, an Iraqi federal paramilitary police officer named Hussein Shehab said, “Our commanders told us to ignore what the Americans taught us. They said, ‘We’ll do it our way.’”

The bottom-line is that the American military cannot control how a state’s military decides to operate or what their political leaders will do with it. U.S. forces tasked with training can only do well if the foreign military in need of military advisors adopts its tactics and principles. Clearly, this never happened, but what makes Washington think it will happen this time? So Baghdad identifies the massive corruption in the army, then what? Discovering it and resolving it or different matters. Also, much of this is a blunder in yesterday’s war effort. Trimming out the fat in funding is at the bottom of the list to repairing a country set in three ethnically and politically distinct paths.

The Pentagon is requesting another $1.2 billion to re-train Iraq to fight ISIL. Part of any more U.S. funding demands a more responsible Iraqi government and cleaner spending practices. U.S. airstrikes have been effective until now, where their usefulness must now be called into question as a primary strategy in the growing unofficial military operation other than war. Collateral damage caused by non-Muslim American warplanes will be exploited by the enemy to produce even more fighters. A ground offensive is slow to take fold and the Iraqi government officials have hinted on more U.S. military advisors than 1,400, which also means more money.

Even the new Iraqi government will want America to solve their problems for them and they will perpetually ask for more and more American money, weapons, training and airpower. “Destroying and Degrading” ISIL is an objective that is essential but it is not a strategy. American trained Iraqis didn’t work for ten years, why do we believe it will work now? Common enemy. A need to save lives. This time the problem is not the reasons for war, the problem is the lack of will to fight it on all sides and without a broader political strategy and endgame for a de facto tripart Iraqi state.

 

 

 

 

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