Despite a decade and $25 billion in taxpayer money spent to train and equip Iraq’s army, the U.S. military is starting from scratch as it prepares Iraq’s newest soldiers to retake Mosul in the spring from the Islamic State.
But it is not clear whether the new support will achieve what top U.S. military leaders call a “sustainable political outcome.”
In the spring, an estimated 25,000 Iraqis, with U.S. support, are expected to launch a new offensive to rout the Islamic State from Mosul.
Many of the recruits being trained are new to combat, and all are starting with basic training, said Army Capt. John Moore, spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Inherent Resolve.
They are being trained by almost 3,000 U.S. forces at one of several U.S.-run sites in central and northern Iraq, Moore said.
“Most of the Iraqi Security Force personnel coming through the training sites are newly formed units,” Moore said.
“The reason they’re training new personnel from scratch is because even though some of the recruits may have served in the military or security forces at some point, the important thing is to provide a consistent starting basis for training,” he said.
The training is part of a larger U.S. effort, detailed by U.S. Central Command last week, to launch an offensive in April or May to defeat the estimated 1,000 to 2,000 Islamic State fighters in Mosul, which the terrorist organization has taken as its Iraq headquarters.
Besides thousands of new recruits, the U.S. is rushing millions of dollars in new equipment to the trainees. On Tuesday, DOD announced it was sending 10,000 M-16 rifles, 23,000 magazines of ammunition, 250 mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, and a total of 1,750 Hellfire missiles to aid the fight.
The U.S. cost so far for the spring offensive: $1.6 billion to provide Iraq training and equipment in fiscal 2015 and another $1.3 billion requested for fiscal 2016.
The other reason why the U.S. is starting over after 10 years of training has to do with Iraqis’ lack of confidence in their government.
Less than a year ago, Iraq’s army collapsed and its second-largest city fell to the extremist group. In its departure, the Iraqi army abandoned U.S.-provided tanks, trucks and weapons to the terrorist group.
A root cause of the collapse was widescale disenfranchisement of Iraq’s Sunni population by Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated government, despite promises that Sunnis would be hired and made officers within the ranks of Iraq’s security forces and police, said Middle East expert Kenneth Katzman, an analyst at the Congressional Research Service.
Instead, an estimated 65 percent of the Iraqi Army commanders were Shi’a and largely distrusted by the Sunnis, Katzman said.
So when the Islamic State infiltrated the Sunni city of Mosul in the summer, Iraqi’s Shi’a led army and its police “did not have the support of the local population,” Katzman said. “The house of cards collapsed.”
Or, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said last summer as Mosul fell, “they weren’t overcome militarily because they didn’t stand and fight. They were overcome because they had come to the conclusion — with some help from [the Islamic State], with corruption and coercion and threats to their families … that their future did not lie with the government in Baghdad.”
The Army’s lead future wars trainer, three-star Gen. H.R. McMaster, calls it one of the key lessons of Operation Iraqi Freedom: Because the U.S. did not ensure that Iraq behind had a stable government, “trusted by the population,” it did not realize one of its top security goals — “to deny the enemy the ability to operate freely,” he said Tuesday at the “Future of War” conference in Washington.
In recent months Dempsey has said that, to be long-lasting, any new effort in Iraq has to result in the Sunnis gaining “more say in their own government.”
“Engaging the Sunni tribesmen in a reformed Iraqi security force where they have some confidence in that security force and they have some confidence in the government of Iraq, all of that has to come together,” he told reporters in October.
But it is not clear whether new U.S. training efforts address the issue, or ensure the mechanisms are in place to create a stable political outcome. The training and equipment program Iraq asked for — and is receiving, because of the critical security interest the U.S. has in defeating the Islamic State — focuses on the basic and tactical.
The training program also has an emphasis on leadership skills, medical evacuation procedures, small unit tactics and air-ground operations, among other skills, Moore said.
Asked if any lessons from last year’s collapse at Mosul are being applied, the U.S. military deferred to Iraq.
“The Iraqis will prioritize requirements for operational forces,” Moore said.
Katzman said while the U.S. would not have a direct say in whether the future Iraqi army is more inclusive to Sunnis in its officer ranks, “we do have the leverage to withhold future support,” he said.
U.S. Central Command spokesman Maj. Curtis Kellogg said the U.S. would have no say in the structure of the future Iraqi army.
“I would stress that the determination of who serves in leadership positions in the Iraqi Army is a decision for the government of Iraq to make, and would refer you to them for any questions on that process for their military,” Kellogg said.
