The real problem with the Iraqi army

Strategy Page:

There's an ancient military truism that very much applies to Iraq; "there are no bad troops, only bad officers." To put it rather more bluntly, the quality of a military force, or a government, is dependent on the quality of its leaders. For the military, that means the officers and NCOs. For a government, it means all those officials who have any authority. In Iraq, and the Middle East generally, there have been damn few "good officers" available since the region was freed from the Ottoman Turk empire in 1918, and, over the next three decades, Western transitional administration.



Westerners were not surprised at the extent of corruption and incompetence they found in the newly formed Arab states. Britain had been running Egypt for most of the 19th century, and was constantly bedeviled by self-destructive attitudes of Egyptian bureaucrats. In Egypt, the concept of efficiency was foreign, and corruption was king. Avoiding personal responsibility was seen as a positive trait, and force was considered a perfectly adequate method for controlling the population. The departing Turks had a saying, "don't involve yourself with the affairs of the Arabs," which reflected their frustration after ruling the region for centuries.



It's not considered polite to bring up this sort of thing, but it is real, and has to be dealt with daily by American troops, diplomats and officials in Iraq. Calls for American troops to put more emphasis on training Iraqis, ignores the dismal results of over three years effort in that department. In this case, it's not entirely the fault of the Iraqis. Saddam's government depended on the Sunni Arab minority to provide nearly all the officers and NCOs in the military, as well as officials in the government and secret police. Few of these Sunni Arabs are working for the government these days. Not because many Sunni Arabs don't want to give democracy a chance, but because the diehard Sunni Arab nationalists have used terror (including murder and kidnapping) to persuade Sunni Arabs to not work for the democratic government.

... Year by year, there are an increasing number of competent officers and NCOs, but it's still not enough to enable U.S. troops to go home. But the trend is clear....

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There is more. While people talk about the time it takes to train troops, a few months, the time it takes to build the infrastructure of NCO and mid level officers is much longer. In the US military it takes years to reach a level of competence through experience for NCO's and Officers. That is what is missing right now in Iraq. Also, as Talibani pointed out recently we have been stuck on a numbers game accepting troops with questionable loyalty to the central government and who put sect and tribe above doing their job. These people have to be weeded out.