Why Are the Islamic State’s Commanders so Much Better Than the Iraqi Army?
Photo Credit: Foreign Policy Shiite militias and Iraqi government forces have started to move into place around the Islamic State-held city of Ramadi in preparation for a highly-publicized but hastily-planned push to wrest the city from the fighters who chased the Iraqi army out earlier this month.
U.S. military officials believe that the militants had been carefully planning the city’s conquest for weeks, slipping fighters into the city to isolate several government buildings, then surrounding and isolating the Iraqi forces trapped in those pockets. They also battered Iraqi positions with dozens of captured Iraqi armored vehicles and bulldozers packed with explosives — 10 of which have been reported to be as large as the 1995 Oklahoma City blast. With scores dead and wounded, the exhausted and demoralized Iraqi forces were ordered to pull back to defensive positions outside of the city. U.S. officials said that dozens of armored vehicles, along with tanks and artillery pieces, were abandoned by government forces.
Furious American policymakers blasted the Iraqis for effectively abandoning the city. The Iraqi army “was not driven out of Ramadi,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told reporters at a NATO summit in Brussels last week. “They drove out of Ramadi.” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, meanwhile, used an interview Sunday to publicly accuse the Iraqis of lacking the “will to fight,” The White House quickly tried to walk the comments back, but there is little doubt Carter was speaking for many inside the Pentagon.
The Defense chief’s comments hinted at the biggest question hanging over both the Ramadi fight and the broader push against the Islamic State: can Baghdad win the war if its generals seem to be continually out-thought and out-maneuvered by their counterparts from the militant group?
As always, however, matters of victory and defeat in war are complicated. When it comes to Ramadi, the loss isn’t one that can simply be placed at the feet of bad leadership. The Iraqi Army and police there had been fighting almost continuously for 18 months with little support — and no relief — from the government in Baghdad, said Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute who specializes in Iraqi military issues. And for them there has been “no safe place, no real rest and recuperation, no escape from the battle.” (Read more from “Why Are the Islamic State’s Commanders so Much Better Than the Iraqi Army?” HERE)
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