Defense Secretary Ashton Carter highlighted the uphill battle that lies ahead in Iraq when he said Sunday the Iraqi forces “showed no will to fight” the Islamic State before they took over the city of Ramadi last weekend.
“What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered; in fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force,” Carter told CNN. “Yet they failed to fight. They withdrew from the site.”
Carter said their withdrawal signaled the Iraqi forces’ reluctance to take on the Islamic State on their own.
“They’re the ones who have to beat ISIL and then keep them beaten,” he noted. “We can participate in the defeat of ISIL, but we can’t make Iraq run as a decent place for people to live. We can’t sustain the victory.”
But Iraqi leader Hakim al-Zamili called Carter’s suggestion that the Iraqi security forces abandoned the city “unrealistic and baseless” and blamed the fall of Ramadi on the failure of U.S. officials to provide the country with adequate weapons.
“The Iraqi army and police did have the will to fight [Islamic State] group in Ramadi, but these forces lack good equipment, weapons and aerial support,” al-Zamili told the Associated Press Sunday. “The U.S. officials should provide Iraq with advanced weapons as soon as possible instead of making such statements.”
Photos circulated on Twitter purport to show the Islamic State carrying out horrific door-to-door slaughter in the city, the capital of Iraq’s second largest district.
Reports last weekend indicate that before the city fell its tribal leaders did not want help from Iranian-backed Shia militias, who are now leading the fight to retake Ramadi.
