The most important fact revealed by ISIS’s victory is that the “Iraqi Army” no longer exists.
Which, of course, means that there are greater challenges than rearming and retraining. This comes down to rebuilding. As Posen writes:
Public sources reported some fourteen divisions in the Iraqi Army in 2014. Between three and five were destroyed in Mosul, leaving nine. At most one was defending Ramadi. Where were the rest? Indeed, where are they now? How is it that Shiite militias must be called upon to liberate Ramadi? If the Iraqi Army has evaporated, or perhaps more accurately deteriorated into a collection of local militias and palace guards, then the U.S.“re-training” mission in Iraq is vastly more difficult than we have been led to believe. Having claimed to build an Iraqi Army, which seems not to exist, and which one doubts ever really existed, the U.S. military is now trying to build another one, from the ground up. Why will things turn out better this time?
This comes as General John Allen says in a speech that it may take “a generation or more” to defeat ISIS and that if it is not defeated:
… it could “wreak havoc on the progress of humanity.”
And at the same time that General David Petraeus is saying:
the U.S. is “probably losing” its fight against the Islamic State in Iraq.
Petraeus under whose leadership Anbar Province was pacified, added that
… these are fights where if you’re not winning, you’re probably losing because time is not on your side.”
Still, he believes that :
“We’ll turn it around. We will win again in Iraq,”
It won’t be easy and it will require an army that does not, at the moment, exist.
And a strategy. Also non-existent.
